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Title: The Magic Bottle
Author: Hare, Cyril [Clark, Alfred Alexander Gordon] (1900-1958)
Date of first publication: 1946
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Faber and Faber, 1946
   [first edition]
Date first posted: 24 January 2017
Date last updated: 24 January 2017
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1394

This ebook was produced by Al Haines and Mark Akrigg


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






  THE
  MAGIC BOTTLE

  by
  CYRIL HARE


  FABER AND FABER LTD
  24 Russell Square
  London




  _First published in Mcmxlvi
  by Faber and Faber Limited
  24 Russell Square London W.C.1
  Printed in Great Britain by
  Purnell and Sons Limited
  Paulton (Somerset) and London_




  To
  CHARLES AND SANDRA




CONTENTS

  CHAPTER

  I. PHILIP AND MARY
  II. BOLSTER PLACE
  III. THE DJINN
  IV. WISHING
  V. THE JELFS HAVE A VISITOR
  VI. SIR SIGISMUND'S SECRET
  VII. STRANGE OCCURRENCE AT A MEETING
  VIII. WHAT HAPPENED ON THE WAY HOME
  IX. AFTER THE ACCIDENT
  X. AT THE POLICE-STATION
  XI. FOOT-PRINTS IN THE PLOUGH
  XII. AN OLD FRIEND REAPPEARS
  XIII. THE FTE
  XIV. SIR SIGISMUND UNBOTTLED
  XV. HOW IT ALL ENDED




CHAPTER ONE

PHILIP AND MARY

Mr. and Mrs. Jelf lived with their two children in a small house just
outside a village called Little Bolster, which is about twenty-five
miles from London.  Mr. Jelf used to take the bus every morning to
Bedstead Junction where he caught the train to the City.  Sometimes he
used to say when he got home in the evening that the railway was a
nightmare, but as a matter of fact it was the Southern.

The children's names were Philip and Mary.  Philip's birthday was in
April and Mary's was in January, so for nearly three months every year
Mary was only a year younger than Philip, though for the rest of the
time he was two years older.  When she wanted to annoy Philip between
their birthdays, Mary used to go about saying that he was only a year
older than she was, and quite often she would get visitors to believe
it, because she was rather tall for her age and Philip was the short,
thick kind.

One September, when Philip was nearly ten and a half and Mary was not
quite eight and three quarters, they were both at home for the summer
holidays.  By rights, they ought to have been just coming back from the
seaside, but this year, just when they were all getting ready to go,
Philip had come out with mumps and by the time he had finished and Mary
was out of quarantine it was too late, because Mr. Jelf had to go back
to the City and anyway the rooms at the sea were let to somebody else.
So what with one thing and another the holidays had been rather dull
and Philip and Mary spent a lot of time wishing that something would
happen.  As a matter of fact, that was what Mr. and Mrs. Jelf were
beginning to wish, but the particular thing they wanted to happen was
for the holidays to stop and the children to go back to school--which
is a pretty dreadful thing for anybody to wish, and only shows what
awful consequences even a silly illness like mumps can have.

There was still a week of the holidays to go when something did happen.
It was in the afternoon, and Philip was reading _The Arabian Nights_
while Mary was looking out of the window wondering whether it was ever
going to stop raining, when a car drew up outside the door and Mary
said, "I believe that's Granny's car."

Granny was Mrs. Jelf's mother, and her name was Mrs. Thwaites.  She was
not a bit like grandmothers in films, who are always very infirm and
aged, and either walk about with a stick or sit in rocking chairs
knitting things and wearing large horn-rimmed spectacles.  The only
kind of stick Mrs. Thwaites ever used was a shooting-stick, which she
took to sit on when she went to the races.  She never sat in a rocking
chair and she was much better at driving a car than knitting--although
she could knit when she had to.  In fact, she could do most things and
she had a habit of doing them when you least expected, like driving
over to call on the Jelfs that afternoon without ringing up to say she
was coming.

Mary let her grandmother in--she got to the front door first because
Philip was still in the middle of _The Arabian Nights_ and it took him
some time to get back--and then Mrs. Jelf came out of the kitchen.  Her
hands were rather floury, because she had been making a cake.  (The
Jelfs had a cook, whose name was Mrs. Marrable, but she had said that
mumps or no mumps, she was going for her holiday, so that was that.)
Then Mrs. Jelf asked her mother if she was staying to tea, but Mrs.
Thwaites said No, she had only looked in for a moment and anyhow she
had a picnic basket in the car.  It seemed a funny sort of day to
choose for a picnic, but Philip and Mary thought it wiser not to
mention it, because even if Mrs. Thwaites was rather young for a
grandmother, she was old enough to do what she liked without having to
make excuses.

Then Mrs. Thwaites lit a cigarette (which is another thing grandmothers
in films don't generally do) and said, "I've bought Bolster Place, and
I'm moving in next week."

Mrs. Jelf just said "Oh!" and did her best not to look surprised.
Actually, there was very little Mrs. Thwaites could do which would
surprise her, simply because nobody could tell what she was going to do
next, so it was no use wondering.  When they were by themselves Mr. and
Mrs. Jelf used to call her "H.M.S. Unpredictable", but they fondly
hoped that the children didn't know that.

Philip and Mary, who were not so good at disguising their feelings as
their mother was, said "Ooh!" which is a lot more expressive than just
"Oh!"  They both knew Bolster Place quite well.  It was a rambling old
house about two miles away on the road to Featherbed, the next village
to Little Bolster as you go away from London.  It looked very nice,
from the outside, all covered with creepers, and from the road you
could see that it had a kitchen garden with a wall right round it and
an orchard and a big lawn with a sun-dial in the middle.  But they had
never been inside, because old Mrs. Worsley-Worsley, whom it belonged
to, was an invalid who never had any visitors except the doctor.  But
at last the doctor had told her that she would never get any better
unless she went to live in South Devon (which was very honourable of
him, because of course he couldn't go on attending to her after she had
gone) and Mrs. Worsley-Worsley had departed in a large green ambulance
and there had been a grand sale of all her furniture and finally the
desirable residence--which was Bolster Place--had been put up for sale
and Mrs. Thwaites had bought it.

"I am going over there now," Mrs. Thwaites said, "to measure the floors
and windows to see where my carpets and curtains are going.  I thought
perhaps the children would like to come over and help me, unless they
have anything more amusing to do this afternoon."

Mrs. Jelf looked a little doubtful and asked whether they would be home
to tea, and Mrs. Thwaites said certainly they wouldn't and what did she
think the picnic basket was for?  There was tea in it for four hungry
people if she could supply some milk.  So that was all settled and
Philip and Mary piled into their grandmother's car while their mother
went back to finish making her cake.

In the car they found an elderly man who their grandmother introduced
to them as Mr. Chaffers.  Evidently he was the fourth hungry person the
tea had been provided for.  He did not look particularly hungry.  He
had very round rosy cheeks and a bald head and a small grey beard.
There was a two foot rule sticking out of his coat pocket and when he
was addressed he said "Ah!" in a deep, ruminating voice.




CHAPTER TWO

BOLSTER PLACE

It was a great moment for Philip and Mary when they drove into the
grounds of Bolster Place and saw the sun-dial and the kitchen garden
wall at close quarters at last.  But they felt a little disappointed
when their grandmother unlocked the door and they walked inside.  Any
house can't help looking rather dismal when it is completely empty of
everything except dirt and cobwebs.  The rooms looked uncomfortably
large and their footsteps on the bare floors waked doleful echoes from
the walls.  It was difficult to imagine that it was all soon to be
filled with Mrs. Thwaites's familiar furniture and that this was going
to be the drawing-room and that was going to be the dining-room, when
at the moment there was nothing to distinguish one from another except
the varying tints of Mrs. Worsley-Worsley's faded wall-paper.

But Mrs. Thwaites seemed to have no difficulty in imagining any of
these things.  In no time she was down on her knees on the dusty
floors, making measurements with a long tape she had brought with her,
and even marking off in chalk just where sideboards and wardrobes were
to stand, so that the removal men would know where to put them when
they came and not find at the last moment that there was no room for
something in the place intended for it, which is what is always apt to
happen when you move house unless you have taken precautions
beforehand.  While she was doing this, Mr. Chaffers was shinning up and
down a step-ladder with marvellous agility for one of his years,
running his rule up and down windows, writing down figures in a very
dog-eared note-book with a pencil that lived behind his left ear, and
remarking "Ah!" at frequent intervals.

Mary helped her grandmother by holding one end of the tape for her and
drawing rather wobbly chalk lines across the floor.  Philip steadied
the step-ladder for Mr. Chaffers and retrieved his pencil when it
escaped from behind his ear, which it frequently did when he leaned
over at an angle to get his rule across a particularly large window.
They were all pretty hot and grimy by the time Mrs. Thwaites clapped
her hands and called "Time!" for tea.

There was nothing to sit on in the house, so they brought in the seats
out of the car and put them on the floor in a circle round the picnic
basket and sat on them cross-legged.  Philip remarked that it was like
a feast in _The Arabian Nights_.

"Much nicer," said Mary.  "I'm sure the Arabians didn't have marmite
sandwiches, or hot tea out of thermos bottles."

"Silly," said Philip, "I didn't mean that.  I meant the way we are all
squatting on the floor, instead of sitting up in chairs.  Not that it
isn't a magnificent feast, too," he added politely to his grandmother.

"If this was the Arabian Nights," said Mrs. Thwaites, "perhaps my
Turkey carpet would be a flying one.  Then I could get it to float over
here and see if it really will fit in to the hall.  I'm sure I've got
the measurements wrong."

"Ah!" said Mr. Chaffers with his mouth full of cake.  He didn't explain
what he meant, and presently he got up, brushed the crumbs off his
waistcoat and wandered back to his step-ladder.  Mrs. Thwaites
collected up the tea-things and then said that as the Turkey carpet was
evidently not in a mood for flying, she was going to measure the hall
again, just in case.  Philip and Mary took the seats to the car and
returned to the house.  They were both getting rather tired of chalking
and measuring, though they didn't like to say so.  But Mrs. Thwaites
had a knack of guessing what people were thinking without their
speaking or even apparently without looking at them, for while she was
still on her knees on the floor trying to read the figures on the tape,
she remarked, "I expect you children would like to do some exploring,
wouldn't you?  There's quite a lot of the house you haven't seen yet.
I'll call you when we're ready to go."

Off went the children, raising clouds of dust as they raced each other
up the stairs.  Mrs. Thwaites was perfectly right, they soon found.
There certainly was a lot of the house they hadn't seen, or wouldn't
even have suspected, looking at it from the front.  The front rooms,
which they had been in already, were just ordinary straightforward
rooms, with four walls at right angles to one another and a door and
windows where you would expect to find them.  But at the back of the
house things became much more interesting.  The rooms there seemed to
have been tucked in wherever the builder could find room for them, so
that they were of all shapes and sizes, but mostly quite small.  Some
had ceilings that sloped unexpectedly, or beams that caught the unwary
head.  There was a corridor that ran the length of the house, with dark
corners which were apt to conceal steps up or down with fatal results
to the rash explorer.  And everywhere were odd bits of things left
behind from the furniture sale--broken bedroom chairs and towel-horses
with missing legs, scraps of carpet and linoleum--enough, they thought,
for a good sized bonfire the next fine day they found themselves at
Bolster Place.

At the very end of the corridor was a flight of stairs.  Going down it,
they found themselves back in the kitchen which they had already seen.
They lingered long enough at the bottom to hear Mr. Chaffers still
booming "Ah!" from the window of what was to be the dining-room.  They
returned to the top, and saw that the stairs did not end with the
corridor, but continued upwards for another two or three steps and came
to a full stop in front of a low door.  It took quite a tug to open it
and then they found themselves looking into a long, low room with a
steep-pitched raftered roof.  The air smelled musty, as though the
small window at the far end, which let in what little light there was,
had not been opened for some time.

"What d'you think this is?" said Mary.

"Box-room," said Philip.  "I remember the advertisement of the house
said: 'Five principal bed and dressing-rooms, day and night nurseries,
three maids' rooms, roomy attics and box-room.'  This must be it."

"I can see a box in the far corner there now," said Mary, peering about
in the gloom.  "I wonder why Mrs. Worsley-Worsley left it behind."

"Because it wasn't worth taking, I expect," Philip suggested.  "Like
the towel-horses and junk in the roomy attics, or whatever they were.
We might have a look at it, all the same."

He took a step across the floor and immediately there was a "chink" of
falling glass.

"Look out!" said Mary, whose eyes were better than Philip's, though
naturally he would never admit it.  "I can see now.  The floor is
simply covered with bottles."

Mary was exaggerating, of course.  It was a large room, and, as they
afterwards proved by counting them, there were only fifty-two
bottles--one for each week in the year--which was not enough anything
like to cover the floor.  Still, they made quite an impressive
collection, neatly arranged in three rows across the room.

Philip picked up the bottle he had kicked over.  It was quite small and
obviously empty.  "Medicine bottle," he remarked.  He took the cork out
and sniffed.  "A pretty foul medicine too," he added.

"I suppose they're all the medicines Mrs. Worsley-Worsley had to have,"
Mary said.  "I think she might have sent them for salvage, even if she
was an invalid.  But how beastly dull!  I did hope we'd find something
a bit more exciting, as a reward for all our exploring.  Let's go
downstairs again."

"We haven't looked in the box yet," said Philip hopefully.

"I bet it's got nothing in it," answered Mary.  "Or if it has, it'll
only be some more of those dismal bottles."

"I bet you sixpence it has," said Philip, more out of
contradictiousness than anything else, and stepping warily across the
floor, he reached the corner under the window.

The box was a very old leather trunk, covered in grey dust.  There was
no difficulty in opening it, for the lid was so perished with age that
it came right away when Philip lifted it.  He looked inside.

"Well?" asked Mary, who hadn't bothered to follow him down the room.
"Who's won the bet?"

"I don't know exactly," replied Philip cautiously.

"What d'you mean?"  Mary could tell from his voice that something was
up.  "You must know whether there's anything inside it or not," she
added rather crossly.

"Well," said Philip slowly, "there's just one thing inside it--a
bottle."

"Oh! a _bottle_!"

"But it's quite a different sort to the others," Philip went on, and
his voice sounded quite excited.  "You'd better come and have a look at
it, Mary."

Mary came down the room in such a hurry that she kicked over two
medicine bottles and didn't bother to pick them up.  By the time she
had reached her brother he had already taken the bottle out of the box.
Together they looked at it under the window.

It obviously was not a medicine bottle.  For one thing it was much
larger, and it was quite a different shape.  It had a long, thin neck
and bulged out below into a round, capacious body.  There was no label
on it and it had a cork in the top, kept in position by wire tied round
the neck and secured by a seal.

"Do you think there's anything in it?" Mary asked.

"Sure to be," said Philip, "or it wouldn't be corked like that.  I
don't know, though," he added.  "It feels jolly light."

"Let's open it anyway," said Mary.

"I'm not sure if we ought to," Philip objected.  He had rather painful
recollections of undoing the wire on a bottle of cider which his father
had left in the dining-room the Christmas before.  The cork had come
out by itself and a lot of the cider had come out with it, and what was
worse the cider had turned out to be Mr. Jelf's very last bottle of
champagne, worth untold gold, and the consequences had been terrible.

But while he was hesitating, Mary had already broken the seal and
untwisted the wire.  This time nothing happened.  She took hold of the
cork and gave it a tug.

"I can't move it," she complained.

Philip could not stand by and watch his sister struggling to do a man's
work with her weak, girlish fingers.

"Let me," he said, and took the bottle from her.

The cork was certainly firmly wedged, and with all his strength at
first he could not move it.  Then he put the bottle on the floor and
held it between his feet and pulled his hardest.  Suddenly the cork
came out with a loud "pop!" and before he could stop himself, Philip
overbalanced and fell on his back.

When he recovered himself, the first thing he saw was the bottle, lying
on its side on the floor.  He reached forward to pick it up, but Mary
caught his arm.

"Look!  Look!" she cried.

From the neck of the bottle was pouring, not liquid, but a stream of
thick black smoke, which ascended in a cloud towards the roof of the
low room and seemed to grow thicker and solider every minute.

"Gosh!" said Philip.  "We've really done it this time!"




CHAPTER THREE

THE DJINN

The smoke, having risen nearly to the roof, did not spread about in the
way that smoke usually does.  Instead, it formed itself into a tall,
dark column, not quite as high as the room itself, which wavered
slightly from side to side in the draught from the open door.  The
smoke poured from the bottle in great puffs, and each puff straightway
joined up with the main body, much as bees join a swarm when the queen
has decided to settle somewhere.  And just as a swarm will change
itself in a few minutes from a flying cloud of insects into a compact,
round ball that a brave man can shake off a tree into a box, so the
column of smoke solidified itself, and took shape before their eyes.

The children watched open-mouthed.  Long before the shape had taken its
final form, while it was still blurred round the edges like a
photograph taken with a camera that has wobbled, Philip realized what
had happened, and he thanked his lucky stars that he had been reading
_The Arabian Nights_ that afternoon.  Obviously, this was a Djinn, and
Djinns, when they had been confined in bottles, were always extremely
cross and very, very dangerous.  Luckily, he knew now exactly what to
do.  All that was necessary was to persuade it to go back into the
bottle before it could do any harm, and then, push the cork in again as
quickly as possible.  The fisherman in _The Arabian Nights_ had managed
it quite easily and Philip was sure he could, too.  After that the
proper thing to do was to throw the bottle into the sea, but that might
not be too easy.  Even if going to the sea had not been out of the
question these holidays, there would have certainly been awkward
questions asked if he had wanted to take a large bottle in his luggage.
However, there was a pond in the garden at Bolster Place, and perhaps
that would do for the time being.  The great thing was to be perfectly
cool and not let him think that you were frightened.

It occurred to Philip that perhaps Mary _was_ frightened.  He
remembered that she had not had the benefits of his education and had
never read _The Arabian Nights_, except the story of Aladdin, which was
of no use in the present crisis.  He looked at her to see how she was
taking it.  So far as he could tell from her expression, Mary was more
excited than frightened.  Indeed, if anything, she seemed rather
pleased.  Her eyes were very large, her cheeks were pink and she was
smiling and clapping her hands softly as though she was at the
pantomime instead of being in mortal danger.  Perhaps, Philip thought,
there were advantages in being ignorant, so long as he was there with
his superior knowledge to protect her.

"Three and a half minutes, exactly!" said a self-satisfied voice.  "I
think that's pretty good."

Philip looked round hastily at the column of smoke.  But it was there
no longer.  In its place was a rather swarthy, dark-haired man in a
neat dark brown suit, who was looking at his wrist-watch as he spoke.
He did not look in the least like the Djinns in the illustrations in
_The Arabian Nights_, who were always at least ten feet high and had
most alarming features.  Philip was relieved to see that this one was
of no more than ordinary size and had quite a good-natured expression.
But that was no reason why he shouldn't be just as dangerous, he
reflected, and he determined to remain on his guard.

"Considering we're allowed five minutes for the test," the Djinn went
on, "I don't think I've done too badly."

Philip thought he saw his chance.

"Wouldn't you like to go back into the bottle?" he suggested, sounding
as innocent as he could.  "Just to see if you could beat your time?"

"Good gracious, No!" said the Djinn with a laugh.  "Once is quite
enough for me, thanks.  Besides, I'm not trying for honours.  A pass
B.A. is as much as I want."

"What's a B.A.?" asked Mary.

"Bottled Afreet," the Djinn explained.  "An Afreet is a special sort of
Djinn, you know.  We all have to pass the test to qualify."

Philip's blood ran cold, because anyone who has read _The Arabian
Nights_ knows that Afreets are the most dangerous sort of Djinns.  And
it didn't look as if this one was going to be so easy to get back into
its bottle as the one in the story.  Perhaps he had made a mistake in
trying to be too clever, instead of sticking to the method laid down in
the book.  He decided to follow the fisherman's example.

"We've only got your word for it that you ever came out of the bottle,"
he said.  "I mean, I wasn't really looking just now.  Suppose you went
back and did it again, then we should really know."

"Don't be silly, Philip," Mary put in.  "Of course he came out of the
bottle.  I was watching every second of the time, if you weren't.  And
I thought he did it beautifully.  Why on earth should he bother to do
it all over again, just for you?"

Philip groaned.  What was one to do with a sister who wouldn't even
take the trouble to read _The Arabian Nights_ and find out how to deal
with an Afreet when you met one?

"For goodness' sake, shut up!" he whispered urgently, hoping the Djinn
would not hear.  "You don't understand a bit."

"What on earth are you talking about?" Mary whispered back.  "I can't
hear."

"Your brother is trying to explain," the Djinn interrupted, "that I am
a highly dangerous creature, and the sooner I'm safely back in my
bottle, the better.  But as a manner of fact you needn't worry.  If you
look at the book again," he went on to Philip, "you'll see that Djinns
only begin to be dangerous after they've been bottled a thousand years
or so, and I haven't been anything like that time in here.  In fact,
I've had a very short spell indeed.  Anyhow, all that Arabian Nights
business is quite out of date.  Mind you, I don't say that a Djinn
really aged in bottle might not be a bit crusty, but nowadays we
usually arrange matters to get decanted quite quickly and come out"--he
smiled again--"quite sweet."

"I think you are sweet," cried Mary impulsively.  "How did you get
here?"

"That would be telling," the Djinn replied.  "I think it's my turn to
ask a few questions, if you don't mind.  To begin with, may I know your
names?"

"Our surname is Jelf," said Philip.  "I am Philip and this is Mary."

"Philip and Mary, eh?" said the Djinn.  He did not go on to say, "You
ought to be William and Mary," as strangers usually did, which was
decidedly one up to him.  Instead, he remarked, "Well, there was once a
King and Queen called Philip and Mary, but Mary wasn't very popular and
people have agreed to forget Philip altogether.  Perhaps it's as well."
And that might count as two up, being an out of the way piece of
learning altogether.

"Now tell me," he went on, "to which of you do I owe the honour--I
mean, which of you let me out?"

"Look here," said Philip, "if we tell you, is it really going to be all
right?  I mean, you're not going to play any Arabian Nights tricks on
us?"

"Certainly not.  I thought I had made that quite plain.  On the
contrary, the person responsible will, in the old phrase, hear of
something to his--or her--advantage."

"Honest?" Philip persisted.

"Honest Afreet."

It sounded very impressive.

"Well then," said Philip, "we both did.  I mean, I pulled the cork out
actually, but it was Mary who undid the wire, and I should never have
touched the cork at all if she hadn't done that first.  So we were both
in it."

"I see," said the Djinn.  He stroked his chin and looked very
thoughtful.  "That makes it rather awkward."

"Why?" asked Mary.

"Well, the rules say that the person liberating a Djinn from his bottle
is allowed a wish----"

"What sort of a wish?" asked Philip.

"Oh, the usual sort.  Just an ordinary magic wish.  But only one,
that's the point.  And you can't divide a wish very well.  I mean, half
a wish is no good to anyone.  What ought we to do?"

The children looked at each other blankly for a moment.  Philip knew
quite well that the really noble thing for a brother to do in such
circumstances was to offer the wish to his sister.  But he knew equally
well that he was not going to do anything of the sort.  After all, he
was the one who had really got the cork out with his own strong arm,
which Mary could never have done alone.  Besides, you couldn't trust a
girl not to do something simply idiotic with a wish if she had it.  He,
on the other hand, would wish for something really useful--exactly
what, he didn't know yet.

"You might toss for it," the Djinn suggested.

"That's a good idea," said Mary.  "Have you any money on you, Philip?"

"No," said Philip.  "Have you?"

"No," said Mary.  "Djinn darling, could you lend us some?"

"Sorry," said the Djinn.  "I never use the stuff."  There was another
pause.

"We could wish for some, I suppose," said Mary.

"Shut up!" cried Philip hastily.  "If you're not careful you'll have
wasted the wish before you know where you are."

Then Mary had a brainwave.

"Look here," she said to the Djinn.  "If a grown-up opened the bottle
and let you out, would he get a wish like anyone else?"

"Certainly.  In fact it nearly always is a grown-up.  They're much more
in the habit of uncorking bottles than children, as a rule."

"Then those rules you were talking about are really meant for grown-up
people?" Mary persisted.

"Yes, I suppose so," the Djinn admitted.

"Like tickets on trains and buses?"

"Like----?  I don't quite know what you mean."

"I do," said Philip.  "Mary, I think that's really bright of you.  Look
here, when Daddy takes the bus from Little Bolster to Bedstead
Junction, he has to pay sixpence, because that's what the rules say the
fare is.  But if Mary and I go----"

"It's only threepence each," Mary put in.  "Don't you see?  Children
half price.  Well, why shouldn't it be the same for wishes?  Two for
the price of one?"

"That certainly sounds reasonable," said the Djinn.  "Just let me
see..."

There suddenly appeared in his hand, from nowhere, it seemed, a small
paper covered book, on the outside of which was printed in large
letters, "CONSOLIDATED REGULATIONS FOR DJINNS, PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY.
REVISED EDITION."  He studied it carefully for some time.

"It doesn't say anything about children here at all," he announced at
last.

"Oh!" groaned Philip and Mary together.

"So it looks as if we were free to make a new Regulation," the Djinn
went on cheerfully.

He reached up to a rafter above his head and pulled down a cobweb,
which he spread carefully on the open book in his hand.  The cobweb
immediately turned itself into a white piece of paper and became
another page in the book.

"Useful things, cobwebs," observed the Djinn.  He then wrote on the
fresh page, using his finger as a pen.

"How will this do?" he asked, and handed the book to Philip.

Neatly printed on the page were the words: "_Regulation 18BA: WISHES,
Djinns, for decanting: All children at half price._"

"Lovely," said Philip.

Mary read it too, and then said doubtfully, "It looks all right, but is
it solidified?"

"She means consolidated," Philip explained.  "That's what the
Regulations are supposed to be, aren't they?"

"Rather!" said the Djinn.  "Solid, consolidated _and_ solidified.  Just
try to tear it out."

Rather doubtfully, Philip pulled at the page, at first gently and then
harder and harder.  It remained firmly attached to the book and did not
show the smallest sign of tearing.  It was the solidest piece of paper
you could imagine.

"That's all right then," said the Djinn, taking back the book, which
immediately vanished in a small puff of smoke.  "Now the only question
to decide is--What do you want to wish for?"




CHAPTER FOUR

WISHING

After the Djinn said that, there was a long, long silence.  It was so
quiet in the room that they could distinctly hear Mr. Chaffers booming
"Ah!" from somewhere far below, and, nearer at hand, the Djinn's
wrist-watch ticking away the minutes while they thought and thought,
and no idea came.  It is awkward enough when an aunt or someone
suddenly asks you what you would like for Christmas and the only things
you can think of are either far too expensive for that particular aunt
to afford, or else potty little objects which you could buy for
yourself out of your Christmas tips, or even worse, something which you
know would be considered "unsuitable".  At least, Christmas comes round
every year, and you can be practically certain that your aunt will
think of something to give you, even if you can't.  But a magic wish,
the one and only you are ever likely to have in your life, is a much
worse proposition.  The very thought of wasting it was too appalling,
and it drove every reasonable idea clean out of the children's heads.

"It is a bit difficult, isn't it?" said the Djinn, sympathetically.

"Dreadfully difficult," agreed Philip.  "And we don't want to make a
mess of it, like people are always doing in books."

"I think I'd like to wish for something quite simple," said Mary.  "You
know how Daddy is always complaining of being hard up?  Well, why not
just wish for an enormous lot of money?"

"The trouble is," said the Djinn, "that that's just about the least
simple thing you can wish for nowadays.  Of course it was different in
the old times.  If you found a lot of jewels and gold in a cave, like
Ali Baba, you just hung on to it, and nobody bothered you with awkward
questions.  But if you did that now, you'd be worried out of your life.
There was a man the other day who was given a wish, and he insisted on
having a pot full of gold coins at the bottom of his garden.  It was
the kind that is always full of gold every morning, however much you
have taken out the day before.  Quite a useful thing to have about the
place, you'd imagine.  Well, it gave this poor fellow no end of
trouble.  You see, nobody is used to gold coins nowadays.  He couldn't
buy anything with them at the shops, and when he took them to his bank
they were very severe with him and told him he could be prosecuted for
hoarding.  (He didn't say what kind of gold coins he wanted, so
naturally we gave him oriental ones, which made it worse, apparently.)
Then the Town Council of the place where he lived took over part of his
land for allotments, and of course the very bit they chose was where
his pot of gold was.  After that, things really became impossible.
Nobody ever found the gold--we always arrange that things of that sort
will be invisible except to the owner--but naturally he wanted to visit
it from time to time, and the people who worked the allotments couldn't
make out why he was always trespassing on their ground.  They thought
he wanted to steal their brussels sprouts or something.  In the end,
after he'd been chased off by dogs three times and prosecuted for
trespassing without lawful excuse twice, he gave it up as a bad job,
and never went near his crock of gold again.  No, wishing for money can
have very awkward consequences."

"All right, then," said Philip.  "Who wants gold coins, anyway?  The
proper thing to do with money is to put it into Savings.  Everyone
knows that.  I think a fat lot of Savings Certificates would be a
really good thing to wish for.  A bit dull, perhaps, but nobody could
make any difficulties about it."

The Djinn shook his head.

"I'm sorry to be so obstructive," he said, "but as a matter of fact,
Savings Certificates would be even more awkward than gold coins.  What
would happen when you wanted to cash them?  The Savings people would be
sure to ask where they came from, and why they weren't recorded in
their books, and all sorts of questions like that.  You'd probably find
yourselves had up for forgery or something before you knew where you
were."

"Bother!" said Philip.  Really, having a wish seemed to be almost more
trouble than it was worth.

"Of course," the Djinn went on, "there are lots of other things to wish
for besides money.  For instance, you could wish for a pretty face or
good manners----"

"Soppy!" said Mary disgustedly.

"--or courage, or honesty, or any good quality you like to think of."

"No," said Philip decidedly.  "That would be cheating.  I mean, you
wouldn't feel a bit proud of not being frightened of anything if all
the time you knew that it wasn't you really who was being brave, but
simply that you were magicked into it.  It would be like the invisible
armour some chaps have in fairy stories, which always seems most
unfair."

"Very true," said the Djinn.

There was another silence, during which Philip wondered whether he
should not wish for a bicycle, only it seemed such a dreadful waste of
magic.  Then the Djinn spoke again.

"Well," he said, "we don't seem to be getting anywhere and we mustn't
waste too much time, as I see that Mr. Chaffers has nearly finished his
measuring and your grandmother will be calling for you directly."  (How
he could see anything of the kind was his own affair, but obviously he
could.)  "On the whole, I think the best plan will be for you each to
have a suspended wish."

"What's that?" asked Mary.

"It simply means that you keep your wish up your sleeve, so to speak,
for when it's needed.  Then when you really want a bit of magic that
will come in useful, you have only to wish and there it is."

"That sounds lovely," said Mary.

But Philip, who liked to think things out, was not so sure.

"I don't think that's a bit safe," he declared.  "We should be sure to
go and wish for something we didn't really want at all, and then be
sorry for it afterwards.  Suppose I was to say to Mary, 'I wish you'd
shut up!' like I do sometimes, without thinking, the next thing I knew
she _would_ shut up, like an umbrella or a concertina, perhaps, and
then never be able to open again.  I'd be afraid to say anything to
anybody if I had a wish hanging over me like that."

"No," said the Djinn reassuringly.  "You needn't worry about that.  I
promise you that that sort of wish simply wouldn't count.  Mind you, I
don't say that the wish you do get may not come as a surprise to you.
You might find you had wished for something without meaning to.  But
that will only make it all the more exciting.  Whatever it is, it will
be something you really want and something truly useful."

"I wish I could believe you," said Philip doubtfully.

"Don't you?" said the Djinn with a smile.

"N-no.  Not absolutely.  I'm sorry if I sound rude, but I've read a lot
about magic wishes, and there's nearly always a catch in them."

"Well," answered the Djinn, "You've just wished you did believe me, and
you don't, so there's one wish that doesn't count, anyway."

"Oh...!" said Philip, and tried to work it out in his head.  "I'll have
to believe you, I suppose.  That doesn't count as my wish coming true,
does it?" he added anxiously.

"Not a bit.  Your wish is still yours, to do what you like with."  The
Djinn looked at his watch.  "We shall really have to look sharp," he
went on.  "Your grandmother will start calling for you in exactly one
minute and a half from now.  Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"Please," said Mary, "can I keep the bottle?  It would look awfully
nice on the nursery mantelpiece, and I should like to have it to remind
me of you."

The Djinn looked rather doubtful.  "We are supposed to return them all
for salvage," he said.  "There's a great shortage of Djinn-bottles just
now.  However," he added, apparently softened by Mary's pleading
expression, "perhaps we could make an exception in this case."

He carefully corked the bottle and handed it to Mary.

"Thank you ever so much," said Mary.

They were starting to go when Philip suddenly remembered a question he
had been meaning to ask.

"What do Djinns do after they've taken their B.A.s?" he said.

"That depends.  Personally, I'm going to Oxford and I think I shall
become a famous Professor of something or other, I haven't decided what
of yet.  Most Djinns become famous men.  Of course, they have
advantages ordinary human beings haven't got."

"D'you mean," said Philip, "there are chaps going about looking like
ordinary people who are really Djinns all the time?"

"Oh yes.  And really, unless you knew how, you'd never tell the
difference."

"It would be sickening to meet another Djinn and not know it," said
Philip.  "I wish I knew how to tell one when I saw him."

"Snap!" said the Djinn.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said 'Snap!'  You've wished a real wish this time, and you've had
it."

"Look here!" Philip shouted, so angry that he was nearly crying.  "That
isn't fair!  I only said I wished I knew, I didn't want to, really.  I
knew there would be a catch in it.  And now I've gone and wasted my
wish on a perfectly useless, measly thing that's no possible use to
anybody!  It's a rotten shame!"

"Nothing of the sort," said the Djinn in a very firm voice that made
Philip quiet all at once.  "You've got hold of about the most valuable
thing you could possibly have.  Next time you do meet a Djinn you'll
know why.  The reason why they make it so difficult to recognize them
is..."

Philip and Mary found themselves alone in the empty room.  The Djinn
had vanished.  They looked at each other in astonishment, wondering
whether it had really happened, or whether they had been dreaming.

"Well!" said Philip at last.

"I wonder whether Granny really is calling for us," said Mary, going to
the top of the back stairs.

Sure enough, she was.

Without saying another word, the two children ran downstairs and
outside to where Mrs. Thwaites was waiting impatiently in the car.




CHAPTER FIVE

THE JELFS HAVE A VISITOR

"Whatever have you got there?" Mrs. Thwaites asked, when she saw the
bottle in Mary's hand.  It was rather an awkward question, Philip
realized all at once, though when you came to think of it, it was not a
very surprising one.  After all, you could hardly expect to come out of
the house with such an unusual object and not be asked what it was.
And, although nothing whatever had been said between them on the
subject, Mary must realize as well as he did that there were some
things you simply could not begin to explain to grown-ups and this was
one of them.  All of which takes quite a lot of explaining, but
actually took next to no time to pass through his rather agitated mind.

Mary's mind, however, did not seem in the least agitated, because she
answered quite gaily, "It's a Djinn-bottle, Granny," as if it was the
most ordinary thing in the world.

To Philip's immense relief, Mrs. Thwaites, too, seemed to take it in
quite a matter-of-fact way.

"Rather an odd shape," she remarked casually, as she started the car.
"Where did you find it?"

"In the box-room," said Philip.  "There were lots of other bottles
there--medicine bottles, mostly."

"Ah!" said Mr. Chaffers.  "I'm not a bit surprised.  That last nurse of
Mrs. Worsley-Worsley's, she was a lot too partial to gin, if you ask
me.  I shouldn't wonder if you weren't to find quite a lot of empty
bottles about the place.  Nothing in it, I suppose?" he added hopefully.

"No," said Philip, and it was a great relief to be able to answer quite
truthfully without giving anything away.  "It's quite empty.  Is it all
right for us to keep it, Granny?" he added.

"Oh, yes!  Certainly, if you want it," answered Mrs. Thwaites, and that
was that.


"Philip," said Mary, as soon as they were alone together at home and
the bottle was safely installed upstairs on the nursery mantelpiece,
next door to the Noah's Ark, which they were much too big to play with
now, "Philip, why on earth did you ask Granny if we could keep it?
Suppose she had said, No?"

"Well, it was a risk," said Philip, "but after all, it was hers in a
way.  You see, she's bought Bolster Place, and I suppose that means
everything inside the house.  If it comes to that," he added
thoughtfully, "she must have bought the Djinn as well, and we've sort
of stolen him from her by letting him go.  It would be rather a shock
for her if she knew."

They both remained silent for some time, looking at the mantelpiece.
There, in the familiar surroundings of the nursery, it seemed a very
plain, matter-of-fact bottle, with quite an agreeable shape and a
pleasant dark colour that gave out attractive greenish gleams where the
light caught it, but without a hint of magic or anything extraordinary
about it.  It might have been any old bottle, picked up anywhere.  And
suddenly all the excitement of the afternoon seemed to go flat, like
the fizz in a glass of mineral water that has been left poured out too
long.

"Philip," said Mary.

"What?"

"I suppose it did happen, didn't it?"

"Did what happen?" asked Philip.

"The Djinn and the wishes and everything."

"Must have," said Philip stoutly, though in his own heart he felt none
too sure.

"You don't think we could have dreamt it or anything?"

Philip shook his head.

"Not unless we both dreamt the same thing at once," he said, "and I
don't see how we could have done that."

"No, I don't suppose we could," said Mary, rather relieved, but she
still looked doubtful, and went on staring at the bottle on the
mantelpiece as if it could help her in some way.  "Philip!" she said
again, so suddenly that it made him jump.

"What?" said her brother, crossly.  "I wish you wouldn't keep on
shouting 'Philip!' at me like that.  I'm here all the time, aren't I?"

"I've just thought of something," Mary went on.  "If it really did
happen, then you must have got your wish--about knowing Djinns when you
meet them."

"Yes, of course."

"Well, then," said Mary, "how do you know a Djinn when he's not looking
like one?"

Philip frowned fearfully in an effort to concentrate.

"I don't know," he admitted at last.  "But perhaps I should remember if
I met one," he added hopefully.

"I wish I was ten feet high!" exclaimed Mary in an angry voice.

Philip looked at her in alarm, but she remained exactly the same size
so far as he could judge.

"You see?" Mary went on tearfully.  "Your wish is no good and mine is
no good.  I believe the whole business is a sham, after all!"

Before Philip could say anything in reply, their mother came into the
room.  She was looking rather flustered and almost cross, which was
unusual for her.

"Father has just got back from the City," she said.  "He has brought a
friend with him and they are going to be very busy talking business, so
I want you to stay up here and go to bed as quietly as possible.  I'll
bring your suppers up in a minute."

"Isn't Daddy going to come up and say good night?" asked Mary.

"Mayn't we come down and say How do you do to the friend?" asked Philip.

"I don't think he wants to be bothered by children just now," Mrs. Jelf
said, looking more flustered than ever.  "He's a very busy man.  But I
dare say Daddy will come up and see you after he has gone."

"What's the friend's name?" said Philip.  "Is it anyone we know?"

"It's nobody you know," his mother told him.  "He is somebody Daddy met
in the City, and his name is Sir Sigismund Kaufman-Fortescue."

"What a silly name!" cried Mary, and burst out laughing.

"Mary!  Be quiet!" said Mrs. Jelf, looking quite alarmed.  "He might
hear you.  Now please be good children and don't make a noise."  And
she hurried downstairs.

Sir Sigismund Kaufman-Fortescue, who was at that moment drinking sherry
with Mr. Jelf in the sitting-room immediately below the nursery, was
small and stout and flabby.  He had a shiny bald top to his head, with
just a rim of black hair surrounding it.  Naturally, he was very rich.
A man called Sigismund Kaufman-Fortescue simply couldn't help being
rich, which was the reason why he had taken the name, although
privately, like Mary, he thought it rather a silly one.  He had tried
being plain John Smith, but found that the only result was that he
immediately began losing money, and as losing money was the one thing
he positively detested, he decided to stick to Kaufman-Fortescue.  He
owned a large house not far away called Great Mattress, and he was on
his way there from the City in his perfectly enormous car that
afternoon when, happening to meet Mr. Jelf, he offered to give him a
lift home.

Mr. Jelf was delighted at the chance of having a quiet talk to Sir
Sigismund, because he was very much in need of his help at the time.
Mr. Jelf was an inventor by profession, and very good at his job.  He
was continually inventing all sorts of highly ingenious gadgets, such
as knitting-needles that counted the rows and stitches for themselves,
or saucepans that turned into toasting-forks when required, and many
other useful things of that nature.  (Naturally Mrs. Jelf had all her
husband's inventions in her house, but usually she forgot to use them,
which was a sore point with him.)  The trouble was that he found it a
great deal easier to invent things than to persuade people to put up
the money to manufacture them and advertize them and generally do all
the expensive things necessary to turn them from beautiful ideas in Mr.
Jelf's head into solid objects to be bought at any ironmonger's or
household stores for good hard cash.  As a result, in spite of all his
cleverness, he had never yet succeeded in making much money.

He had just completed a particularly clever and complicated invention,
which he called his masterpiece.  He was perfectly certain that if only
it could be put on the market it would make his fortune.  But at the
moment, for lack of money, the masterpiece simply consisted of a number
of rather squiggly drawings on sheets of very creased paper, which he
kept in a big envelope in his pocket, and was always prepared to show
to anyone who might be interested.  He had worked out that before the
invention could be manufactured he would want just ten thousand pounds,
which is a lot of money to a hard-working inventor, but of course a
mere trifle to a man like Sir Sigismund.

Coming down from the city in Sir Sigismund's car, Mr. Jelf explained
all about his invention and that if he would only lend him ten thousand
pounds he would get it back in no time, because the invention was bound
to be extremely successful and would sell at twenty-five shillings and
elevenpence three-farthings (plus purchase-tax), whereas it would only
cost sixpence halfpenny to make, once the machinery and things for
making it had been paid for.  Sir Sigismund was always very cautious
about lending money, even small amounts like ten thousand pounds (which
was another reason why he was so rich), but he was sufficiently
interested to agree to come into Mr. Jelf's house and talk the matter
over.  And Mrs. Jelf could see from the look in her husband's eye that
he intended to ask him to stay for dinner.  That was what had made her
flustered and almost cross, because of course there was next to nothing
to eat in the house and Mrs. Marrable wasn't there to cook it.

Mrs. Jelf, however, was quite as clever an inventor as Mr. Jelf in her
own way, and by the time Sir Sigismund had finished his second glass of
sherry she had done something extremely ingenious with what was left of
her very last packet of dried eggs and the remains of the Sunday joint,
so that she was able to smile sweetly when Mr. Jelf casually invited
his guest to stay and take what he called "pot luck".  Only it was not
luck at all but real ingenuity on the part of Mrs. Jelf.

Meanwhile, of course, there was also the children's supper to think of.
They didn't get quite such pot luck as the guest, naturally, but there
was just enough dried egg left in the packet to give them each
sufficient scrambled egg to cover a big piece of toast, and in addition
they had a mug full of cocoa apiece.  Mrs. Jelf brought it up to them
in the nursery on two small trays and then went downstairs to dish up
dinner in the dining-room.

Sir Sigismund by this time had heard all about the invention several
times over and he was beginning to wonder whether it would not be worth
while giving Mr. Jelf ten thousand pounds at once to make him stop
talking (much as the Jelfs used to give the waits sixpence at Christmas
to stop them starting up "Good King Wenceslas" for the twentieth time);
but when Mrs. Jelf opened the door to announce that dinner was ready,
such a rich smell of food was wafted to his nostrils that he decided to
stay, instead of driving straight away to Great Mattress as he had
intended.

Philip and Mary meanwhile had been in the nursery, listening to the
burbling of voices from below and speculating what it was all about.
They felt rather hurt at being exiled in this manner.  Naturally they
knew most of their parents' friends and they were disappointed at not
being allowed so much as to have a look at this one.

"I should think he's rather a pig, not wanting to see us," said Mary,
blowing at her cocoa which was very hot.

"He might be anything with a comic name like that," said Philip, who
was sitting on the floor, trying to balance his tray on his knees.
"Barely human, I should say."

Just then the burbling downstairs stopped for a moment and then they
heard the sitting-room door open.

"He's coming out into the hall, I do believe!" exclaimed Philip.
"Let's see if we can't have a squint at him."

He got up, carrying his supper tray, and tiptoed cautiously to the
landing.  Looking down the well of the stairs he could see his father
and mother and Sir Sigismund walking across the hall to the dining-room
door.

Balancing the tray precariously on the edge of the banister rail, he
leaned over to have a good look at the visitor.

It was impossible to get a clear view of his face, but the light of the
hall lamp gleamed brilliantly on his shiny bald head....

"Gosh!" exclaimed Philip in a loud, excited voice.

At that moment the mug of scalding hot cocoa, followed by the scrambled
egg, slipped clean off the tray and descended in a cascade full on the
top of Sir Sigismund's head.




CHAPTER SIX

SIR SIGISMUND'S SECRET

It is generally agreed among people who know such things, that if you
want to borrow ten thousand pounds from anyone, you should take
particular care not to allow hot cocoa and scrambled egg to be poured
on his head.  It has a very decidedly bad effect on business relations.
If Mr. Jelf did not know it at the time, he learned it very shortly
after, for although he and Mrs. Jelf did everything they possibly could
to repair the damage, and indeed succeeded in mopping up all the cocoa
and removing most of the egg-stains from Sir Sigismund's coat, there
was nothing they could do to soothe his ruffled spirits.  The more they
apologized and tried to explain, the shorter his temper grew.  He said
several times and with growing emphasis that he had not come there to
be made a fool of, and in the end he stumped out of the house in a
fury, got into his huge car and drove away to Great Mattress.

It was a sad evening for the Jelf household.  Mr. and Mrs. Jelf were
left to eat her ingeniously invented dish alone, and found they had
very little appetite for it.  Philip's supper had all gone over the
banisters on to Sir Sigismund's head, and in the circumstances he
hardly dared to ask for any more, so he went to bed hungry.  His father
had told him that he would "see him in the morning" about his
behaviour, so he had nothing very pleasant to look forward to.  As for
Mary, although nobody could say that what had happened was her fault,
she was perfectly miserable at the way in which things had turned out.
After the excitements of the afternoon there seemed to have been one
disappointment after another, and she tossed and turned in her bed for
a long time before she finally went to sleep.

Next morning, before he went to the City, Mr. Jelf "saw" Philip as he
had said he would, but it turned out rather differently from what
Philip had expected.

"I really don't know what to do with you, Philip," his father said.
"In fact, I don't think there is anything I can do with you.  If you
had broken something worth sixpence I could stop it out of your pocket
money.  If you had done any ordinary kind of damage I could punish you
in some way that would be more or less adequate.  But when it's simply
a question of depriving me of ten thousand pounds, what on earth can I
do?"

"Ten thousand pounds!" said Philip.  Of course, it was the first he had
heard of it.

His father explained to him how Sir Sigismund had come to be in the
house the previous night and what the effect of the accident with the
supper tray had been.  "And I simply cannot for the life of me
imagine," he concluded, "how you came to be so appallingly careless.
What on earth made you behave like that?"

"I--I really don't know," Philip muttered, turning red.  "It just
happened, I suppose.  I'm awfully sorry."

"No doubt you are," said Mr. Jelf, who was inclined to get sarcastic
when he was angry.  "Unfortunately, your sorrow doesn't seem likely to
be of very much practical use.  Unless, by any chance you have ten
thousand pounds saved up from your tips last Christmas which you could
let me have?"

"No I haven't," said Philip, gravely.  "But I will try to get it back
for you, Daddy, honestly I will."

"That's a very fair offer," said his father, "and I'm sure I'm much
obliged to you.  Perhaps, if it is not asking too much, you could let
me know how you propose to set about it?"

Philip hesitated, and opened his mouth to speak, but then thought
better of it.

"Well?" said Mr. Jelf.

"Perhaps if I was to go and see Sir Sigismund," Philip said at last, "I
could explain what happened and then he wouldn't be so cross--so cross
with you, I mean," he added.

"Please don't try any such thing," said Mr. Jelf hastily.  "You have
done quite enough harm already, merely by looking at Sir Sigismund.
Heaven knows what the effect would be of your trying to talk to him!  I
think, if you don't mind, you had better rest on your laurels.  Well,"
he concluded, "I must be getting up to London, to see if there is
anything to be done to put things right.  But I'm very much afraid that
it would take a cleverer inventor than I am to clear up the mess you
have landed me in."

As soon as his father had gone, Philip ran off to find Mary.  He found
her in the nursery, trying to read a book and looking very dejected.

"What's happened?" she asked.  "Was Daddy very angry with you?"

"He was a bit," Philip admitted.  "But he's not going to do anything
about it.  He said that as I had lost him ten thousand pounds, there
was nothing much he could do."

"I don't understand," said Mary.  "I didn't know Daddy had ten thousand
pounds."

"He hasn't," said Philip.  "That's just the trouble."  He explained
what his father had told him, and went on, "I told him I'd get it back
for him, but of course he wouldn't believe me."

"I should think not!" said Mary.  "You know you couldn't do anything of
the sort."

"Perhaps I couldn't, but you might, Mary.  After all, you've still got
the wish the Djinn gave you."

Mary shook her head.

"After what happened last night, I don't think I want to believe in
Djinns at all," she said.

"After what happened last night," Philip retorted, "you'll jolly well
have to."

"What do you mean?" asked Mary.

"I mean that Sir Sigismund is a Djinn himself, that's all."

"Sir Sigismund a Djinn!" said Mary.  "But Philip, that's nonsense!"

"Why should it be nonsense?" said Philip.

"Well, because he's--he's just a person."  Mary found it difficult to
explain what she meant.  "I mean, he didn't come out of a bottle or
anything, but just came to the door in a car with Daddy."

"It wouldn't have made any difference if he'd come on a bicycle, or
pushing a pram," said Philip.  "He's a genuine, hundred per cent
Bottled Afreet.  That's why I dropped all my supper on his head."

"But why should you want to drop things on his head, just because he's
a Djinn?" asked Mary, who was getting more and more puzzled.

"Silly!  I didn't want to.  That was just an accident, because I was so
surprised and excited when I found out that I forgot all about the
stupid old tray and over it went."

"But are you sure--about Sir Sigismund, I mean?"

"Absolutely sure," said Philip positively.  "You remember I told you
that I didn't know how I should be able to recognize a Djinn when I saw
one, and until I saw Sir Sigismund I hadn't the vaguest idea how to do
it.  And then all of a sudden I remembered."

"You can't remember something if you didn't know it before," Mary
objected.

"Can't you?  It felt like remembering, anyway.  Just as if I'd
forgotten something that seeing him reminded me of."

"But you didn't even see him properly," said Mary.  "I didn't, anyway.
Only the top of his head before you poured all the cocoa on it."

"That was what made me remember," replied Philip.  "The top of his
head, I mean, not the cocoa, of course.  When he came out into the hall
the light was shining on it and in the middle of the bald piece I
suddenly saw a funny little round dent.  It was just the size and shape
of the cork in that bottle."  Philip nodded towards the mantelpiece.

"Well?" said Mary.

"Don't you see?  When a Djinn's been shut up in a bottle, the cork must
be pressing very hard on his head and that's what leaves the mark."

Mary remained unconvinced.

"I didn't see any mark on his head," she said.  "And I had just as good
a look as you did, even if I didn't spill anything on him."

"I wish you'd stop talking about spilling things," said Philip crossly.
"You'd have done just the same if you'd been me.  And the reason why
you couldn't see the mark is pretty obvious, I should have thought.  I
had the wish about recognizing Djinns and you hadn't.  I dare say that
mark's invisible to everyone in the world except me," he added, rather
proudly.

Mary said nothing for a moment.  She was thinking very hard and
frowning horribly in the effort.  Finally she said, "If that's really
right, and you weren't just imagining things----"

"It's right enough," Philip interrupted.  "I can't explain it, but
there was a sort of Djinnishness about that little hole on the top of
his head----"

"_If_ it's right," Mary repeated, "then it means that the Djinn (our
Djinn, I mean) was really telling the truth about the wishes he gave
us----"

"Of course he was!" said Philip excitedly.  "And that means your wish
is a good one, too.  Don't you see, Mary, you can get Daddy his ten
thousand pounds as easy as----  Oh!  I forgot," he added.  "He said it
was a mistake to wish for money, didn't he?"

"Yes," Mary agreed.  "Besides, I don't think Daddy would really like it
a bit if I was to give him ten thousand pounds.  He'd probably want to
know where it came from."

"He'd be jolly well sure to," said Philip with emphasis.  "He's most
particular about money.  Can you see us just saying casually at
breakfast one morning, 'Oh, Daddy, here's a little present for you,
with our love', and giving him all that money?"

"Tied up in tissue paper with a coloured ribbon," said Mary, giggling.
"It would be an awfully big parcel, too.  Just imagine Daddy's face!"

"No, Mary," Philip went on, "what we want to do is to get Sir Sigismund
to lend it to Daddy just as he asked him to do last night.  Couldn't
you just wish him to do that?"

It was Mary's turn to look doubtful.

"Wouldn't that be wishing for money in a way?" she said.  "Besides, if
Sir Sigismund is a Djinn, himself, how do we know another Djinn's wish
will work on him?  Suppose he wishes not to?"

Philip scratched his head and looked at the floor as if he would find a
solution for the problem there.  Then he stared at the ceiling, but
that didn't seem to give him any ideas either.  Finally he fixed his
gaze on the mantelpiece, where stood the bottle that had been the
original cause of all the trouble.

"Let's think this out carefully," he said at last, addressing his words
to the bottle rather than to Mary.  "We want Sir Sigismund to come here
and see Daddy again.  Perhaps he'd come if you wished him to.  I don't
know, but we could try.  But that would be no use if when he came he
was still so cross that he didn't want to lend the money.  The question
is, how to make him not cross?"

Mary sighed.

"Oh, Philip, I wish everything wasn't so complicated!" she cried.

Before Philip could say anything, even to point out emphatically that
this was not a wish that counted, the door opened and their mother came
into the room.  She looked rather harassed, but made no allusion to the
sad events of the night before.

"Children," she said, "it's a lovely morning, and you ought to be out
of doors.  I think a walk would do you good.  I want some things from
the grocer's and I'm much too busy to go myself.  Get your shoes on and
I'll give you the list."

It was nearly a mile from the Jelf's house to the little village store
where they did most of their shopping.  Philip and Mary enjoyed the
walk.  After the rain of the day before the air was fresh and clear and
the sun shone down from a cloudless sky.  For the time being they
forgot all about Sir Sigismund and all the troubles that he had caused.
But no sooner were they arrived at their destination than they were
forcibly reminded of him.

In the window of the shop was displayed a large poster, bearing the
following words upon it, in heavy black type on a yellow ground:


  BOLSTER RURAL DISTRICT COUNCIL ELECTIONS
  PUBLIC MEETING
  at the Memorial Hall, Eiderdown, September the 9th.

  3 p.m.

  Speaker:

  SIR SIGISMUND KAUFMAN-FORTESCUE, B.A.
  (Sleepers' Association Candidate)

  Chairman:
  FERDINAND FOLIOT-FOLJAMBE, ESQ., J.P.

  Doors open 2.30 p.m.  All are welcome.


"September the 9th--that's to-day," remarked Mary.

"Yes," said Philip absently, as they passed into the shop.  He said no
more until, about two minutes later, while they were waiting to be
served, he suddenly ejaculated, "Mary, I've got an idea!" so loudly and
fiercely that the young lady assistant who was weighing out a purchase
for another customer dropped what she was holding and sent about half a
pound of best breakfast coffee flying all over the counter.

"Do you mean, how to make Sir Sigismund not cross?" Mary asked Philip
in a whisper, under cover of the commotion caused by the coffee.

"Not exactly," was the reply.  "I'll tell you when we get outside."

What Philip's idea was he explained to Mary on the way home, with the
result that they arrived back at the house fairly sizzling with
suppressed excitement.




CHAPTER SEVEN

STRANGE OCCURRENCE AT A MEETING

"What are you two thinking of doing this afternoon?" Mrs. Jelf asked at
lunch.  "Shall I ring up Granny and ask if she is going over to Bolster
Place again?"

Philip tried to sound as casual as possible as he replied, "Would it be
all right if we took the bus into Eiderdown, Mummy?"

"Eiderdown?" said Mrs. Jelf in surprise.  "That's rather a long way,
isn't it?  Nearly seven miles.  Is there anything special you want to
do there?"

Philip went rather red.

"Oh well, I thought we might p'raps..." he muttered and contrived to
choke rather badly over his pudding.

"Well, I don't see why you shouldn't go if you want to," said his
mother, after the choke subsided.  "It will be something for you to do
and I'm afraid these have been rather dull holidays for you.  If you
take your ration cards, you might see if you can get any chocolate
there.  There doesn't seem to be any in Bolster."

Half an hour later two anxious figures might have been seen waiting at
the bus stop at the corner.  Although it was quite a warm afternoon,
Philip was wearing his overcoat.  It bulged considerably on one side
and he kept his arm up to prevent the round, rather slippery object
beneath from falling.  From time to time Mary murmured to him, "Do be
careful of it, Philip!" and he whispered back, "Of course I will,
silly!"  They were both feeling rather nervous and not unnaturally this
tended to make them cross.

The bus arrived.  As it was market day in Eiderdown, it was crowded
chiefly by large women with string bags, who took up a good deal of
room.  Philip and Mary squashed into a seat.  At the next stop still
more large women with bags got in and one of the largest of them trod
on Philip's toes and muttered angrily that in her young days children
were supposed to stand up for their elders.  Philip was furious.  He
knew quite well he ought to stand up for ladies in buses, and the only
reason why he did not do so on this occasion was that if he did the
precious object beneath his coat would be certain to slip down if the
bus gave a lurch.  But of course he could do nothing about it, and had
to endure the cross looks of the large woman all the way into Eiderdown.

They reached their destination as the clock in the market square
pointed to ten minutes to three.  Philip and Mary got out and found
themselves in a crowd of eager shoppers who were clustering round the
stalls which spread themselves all across the square.  They stopped at
one stall to buy a quarter of a pound of chocolate.  Philip had some
difficulty in getting the money and the ration card out of his pocket
while still keeping one arm firmly across the bulge beneath his
overcoat, which made the woman at the stall enquire rudely whether he'd
got a baby in there.  At the lower end of the square was the cattle
market, and here the air was filled with the lowing of cows and the
bleating of sheep and the pavement was crowded with red-faced farmers
and dealers, most of whom looked as if they had eaten--and drunk--a
good lunch.  At the end of the square, overlooking the cattle market,
was a tall, ugly building with the words "Memorial Hall" above the
door, and towards this the children made their way.

"I hope we're not too late," murmured Mary as they pushed open the
swing doors.  "It's just three now, and the doors opened at half past
two.  Perhaps there won't be any room for us."

She need not have worried.  Evidently the booths and stalls in the
market place were a greater attraction to the people of Eiderdown than
the Bolster Rural District Council elections.  They followed a notice
"To the Meeting" up a short stairway and then came into a large,
draughty hall with rows and rows of hard chairs and at the further end
a platform with a table in the middle of it.

On the table was a jug of water with a glass turned upside down on top.
Immediately behind the water jug sat a tall, elderly gentleman with a
melancholy downturned moustache.  This was evidently Ferdinand
Foliot-Foljambe, Esq., J.P.  On either side of him sat a number of
other serious-faced men and women, also decidedly elderly.  Most of
them looked fairly drowsy, and one was certainly sound asleep.  The
children noticed immediately that Sir Sigismund was not on the
platform.  They noticed, too, that the chair immediately on Mr. F. F.'s
right was empty.  As to the body of the hall, that was nearly empty,
too.  About a dozen people, not counting two babies in arms, were
distributed among the rows of chairs.  Among them Philip recognized the
large woman with the string bag who had stood on his toes in the bus.
She had evidently come to the meeting to rest her feet before going out
into the market to fill the bag.  Philip, who was of a forgiving
nature, felt quite glad that she had found a seat somewhere at last.
The hall was very warm and the windows looking out on to the square
were open.  Through them drifted the sound of the traffic, voices of
the crowd and, above all, the noise of the livestock in the market,
bellowing, grunting and bleating, according to their several natures.

Nobody took any notice of the children as they tip-toed their way up
the hall and finally settled themselves on two chairs in the front row
just under the chairman's table.  But almost as soon as they had sat
down, Mr. Foliot-Foljambe, as though he had been waiting for them,
looked at his watch, coughed, rose to his feet and said in a loud
voice, "Order, order!"

There was no reply to this observation, unless you could count a loud
protesting squeal from a pig which was being lifted into a cart below.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Mr. Foliot-Foljambe went on, rather discomposed
by the animal interruptions which punctuated his speech, "it gives me
great pleasure (_Moo-oo-oo!_) to welcome you all to this meeting
(_Grunt!_), and to see before me such a large and representative
assembly (_Baa-aa-aa!_) of the Rural District electors."

At this point one of the babies began to cry very loudly, and Mr.
Foliot-Foljambe had to stop.  Mary took the opportunity to ask Philip,
"What is a Rural District ejector?"

"Elector, not ejector," said Philip.  "Ejectors are a sort of gun."

"Well, what is it, any way?"

"I've forgotten," said Philip, who never had known, but did not like to
admit it.  "But why isn't Sir Sigismund here?"

The baby was hushed to silence and the chairman began again.

"As you know," he went on, "this meeting has been called by that
influential body, the Sleepers' Association."

Here the old gentleman who had been peacefully slumbering on the
platform uttered a loud snore.

"Er--the Sleepers' Association," repeated Mr. Foliot-Foljambe, losing
his way among the notes which he had spread out on the table in front
of him.

The old gentleman snored again and there was a perfect chorus of baas
and moos from beneath the window.  Philip began to feel a bit sleepy
himself.  Whatever a Rural District elector was, he thought, it
certainly was not a very exciting business.  But he still kept his arm
tight across his overcoat, and that kept him awake.

"We are looking forward to the privilege of an address from our
candidate, Sir Sigismund Kaufman-Fortescue," proceeded the chairman,
when he had found the right piece of paper at last.

"Hear, hear!" said a leathery-faced lady on the platform in a
determined voice.  She was echoed by a hen in the market which had just
laid an egg while waiting to be sold and was cackling the news to the
whole of Eiderdown.

"Unfortunately," the speech went on, "Sir Sigismund has been delayed by
important business, but we expect him with us at any moment.
(_Baa-aa-aa!_)  Meanwhile, until he does arrive, perhaps you will bear
with me--"

At this point the woman from the bus got up and walked down the hall
and out of the door at the far end.  She had very squeaky shoes and
made quite a commotion.  The children felt sorry for Mr.
Foliot-Foljambe, who was quite put out by this interruption, and Philip
no longer regretted that he had not given up his seat to anyone so rude
and inconsiderate.

"--bear with me," the harassed chairman repeated, "while I explain
quite briefly the great importance of the forthcoming election."

"Hear, hear!" repeated the leathery lady, this time so loudly that she
succeeded in waking up the old gentleman who had been snoring.  He sat
up, blinked, rubbed his eyes, and then, evidently not quite realizing
where he was, ejaculated, "What are you doing, Clara?" which upset Mr.
Foliot-Foljambe more than anything that had gone before.

None the less, in spite of all these difficulties, and in spite of the
competition from the market-place, which never seemed to stop, Mr.
Foliot-Foljambe did proceed to explain the importance of the election
for ten minutes.  To the children they were the longest ten minutes
they had ever known.  It was, Philip told himself, worse than the
dullest sermon, because there was not even a hymn to look forward to at
the end.  But at last, when the chairman was in the middle of a very
long and involved sentence, a loud, imperious hoot from a motor-horn
was heard just outside.  Mr. Foliot-Foljambe stopped abruptly, craned
his neck to look out of the window, and then abandoning his speech with
every sign of relief, said, "Ladies and gentlemen, our candidate has
arrived!"

A moment later, Sir Sigismund came into the hall and walked up the
platform with hurried strides.  Everybody, led by the chairman, clapped
their hands, except for the babies, of whom one was asleep and the
other set up a mournful wail.  The combined noise echoed rather
dismally in the nearly empty hall, but Sir Sigismund did not seem in
the least discomposed.  He climbed quickly on to the platform, shook
hands with the chairman and took his seat with an expansive smile.

Mr. Foliot-Foljambe turned to the audience once more.

"And now ladies and gentlemen," he said, "I have very much pleasure in
introducing to you Sir Sigismund Kaufman-Fortescue!"

Sir Sigismund, who was dressed in a very gay suit of check tweeds and
had a large carnation in his button-hole, rose to his feet.

"Now's the time!" whispered Philip to Mary, and she nodded, her eyes
bright with excitement.

From beneath his overcoat he produced the Djinn bottle, silently
removed the cork, and set it up against the foot of the platform, just
beneath where Sir Sigismund was standing.

"Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen!" Sir Sigismund began in a clear,
confident voice.  At the same time, Mary, leaning forward in her chair,
and speaking in low but distinct tones, uttered these fateful words:

"I wish that Sir Sigismund Kaufman-Fortescue should turn back into
smoke and come into this bottle!"

Then the children sat back in their chairs and watched the platform to
see the result.

For a few dreadful moments it looked as if nothing was going to happen.
Sir Sigismund continued with his speech.  "I must begin by
apologising," he said easily, "for my late arrival here, which is due
to..."

He paused and looked down at his feet.  An uneasy expression came over
his face.  As he did so, the children, from their seats below the
platform, saw a thin trickle of black vapour oozing through the cracks
between the planks of the platform.  It formed itself into a narrow
column and first slowly, then with increasing rapidity, poured itself
into the neck of the bottle.

"Er--due to important public engagements elsewhere," said Sir Sigismund
in rather faltering tones, still manfully trying to continue with his
speech under what must be admitted to have been rather exceptional
difficulties.  By now, not only his feet but his legs up to the knees
had dissolved into smoke and were being sucked remorselessly into the
bottle.  His head and the upper part of his body still looked solid
enough, but it was apparent that they had no firm support, and only by
keeping a firm grip on the table with his hands did he save what was
left of himself from dropping to the floor.

To the children, even though they knew what was happening, it was a
fascinating spectacle, more exciting in its way than when they had
opened the bottle for the first time.  Nobody else, of course, had any
idea of what was going on, and the table hid the lower part of Sir
Sigismund (or rather the place where it should have been) from the view
of most of the audience.  But both Mr. Foliot-Foljambe and the
leathery-faced lady (who sat on either side of him) looked at what they
could see of their candidate in some alarm.

"I shall not detain you long," declared Sir Sigismund in a last
despairing effort.  And indeed he did not.  For the magic at this point
decided to act quickly, as though it were dissatisfied with the slow
progress up to this point.  The rest of Sir Sigismund disappeared quite
suddenly.  It was almost like blowing out the flame of a candle.  At
one moment there was the upper part of his gay suit, the waistcoat
buttons strained by the ample chest and stomach inside, and on top of
it his broad, heavy face with its double chin; the next, there was
nothing but a cloud of black smoke, which poured with astonishing speed
downwards to the floor of the platform and from there into the bottle
waiting to receive it.  In the space of a few seconds the place on the
platform next to Mr. Foliot-Foljambe was completely empty, while in the
front row of the seats below Philip triumphantly rammed home the cork.

For a moment there was complete silence in the hall, against which the
animal noises outside sounded louder than ever.  Then everybody began
to talk at once.  Everyone on the platform stood up, except for the
chairman and the leathery-faced lady, who simultaneously went down on
their knees to see whether Sir Sigismund was hiding under the table,
and bumped their heads together very hard in the process.  The people
at the back of the hall, more awake now than they had been at any time
since the meeting began, charged forward towards the platform in a
body.  Very soon the whole meeting was crowded round the place where
Sir Sigismund had been, arguing and disputing at the top of their
voices.

"We must send for the police!" said the leathery-faced lady, with her
hat all askew from the bump that the chairman had given her.

"You don't want the police, lady, you want the fire-brigade," said a
man from the back of the hall.  "He set fire to himself, that's what.
Didn't you see the smoke?"

"Where's the funny man gone to, Mummy?" asked a little girl in a shrill
voice.  "I want to see the funny man again!"

"But he must be somewhere about!" said Mr. Foliot-Foljambe helplessly.
"I saw him here only a moment ago, with my own eyes!  Look, some of
you, look for him!"

And look they did, under chairs and behind curtains, even behind the
large bust of Queen Victoria which stood on a shelf at the back of the
platform.  They looked everywhere.  Everywhere, that is, except in the
bottle, which, with its precious contents, was now safely ensconced
once more beneath Philip's overcoat.

Over the din of voices, Mary heard the chime of the clock in the market
square.

"Philip," she said, "that's half past three.  If we hurry now, we can
just catch the bus home."

"Come on," said Philip.

Nobody in the hall noticed the two children as, flushed with triumph,
they slipped out, carrying with them the hapless candidate for the
Bolster Rural District Elections.




CHAPTER EIGHT

WHAT HAPPENED ON THE WAY HOME

"We've got Sir Sigismund!  We've got Sir Sigismund!" chanted Mary in
her excitement as she and Philip raced down the stairs of the Memorial
Hall and into the square.  "Philip, hasn't everything gone simply
marvellously!  Now, all we have to do is to get him home and----"

"He'll simply have to do what we want when we let him out of the
bottle," said Philip.  "We shan't have any doubt about what to wish for
this time, shall we, Mary?"

"But don't forget there will be a wish to spare," Mary reminded him.
"Children half price.  That's a solidified regulation, isn't it?"

"Rather!" said Philip, happily.  "And now we know how to do it, what's
to stop us going about catching Djinns whenever we see them and
charging two wishes every time we let them out?  Gosh!  What a lark it
would be!  There's a chap at school who spends all the hols. catching
butterflies.  It would make him stare a bit if I told him I'd spent
mine catching Djinns!"

The idea tickled his fancy so much that he had to stop and laugh out
loud.

"We'll have to hurry," said Mary.  "Look, there's the bus just coming
up to the stop, and there's a beastly long queue already."

Running across the square and dodging between the market stalls, they
reached the end of the queue just as the bus drew up.  Philip could see
at once that it would be touch and go whether or not there would be
room for them by the time all the people in front had got in.  The
passengers took longer to fit themselves into the bus than it had taken
Sir Sigismund to get into the bottle, and by the time the children
reached the head of the queue, more people had attached themselves to
its tail.  It was obvious that most of these would be disappointed, and
presently there was some ugly jostling and pushing from behind.

"Room for one more only!" cried the conductress, just as Philip was
about to put his foot on the step.

Philip hesitated for a moment.  Did he and Mary count as one?  They did
for magic wishes, he knew, but for the moment he had forgotten the
rules for buses.  The hesitation was fatal.  The next instant he was
violently pushed on one side and his old enemy, the fat lady with the
string bag, charged past him on to the bus.  It was so unexpected that
Philip was nearly knocked off his feet.  His arm flew up and the
precious bottle, slipping from under his coat, went crashing to the
ground.

To the children's astonishment, it did not break.  Instead it did
something far more remarkable and, as it turned out, very nearly as
troublesome.  It bounced.  And it was no mere straight up and down
bounce either, like a tennis ball that has been dropped directly on to
the ground.  This was a sideways bounce, at an acute angle,
astonishingly long and low considering what a short distance it had
fallen in the first place.  In fact, as Philip said afterwards, it was
really more like flying than bouncing--as though the bottle knew where
it was going.  And the flight ended plump in the middle of a stall of
second-hand glass and crockery several yards away.  There the bottle
landed, neatly and quietly, without disturbing any of the other goods
on the stall, and sat up on its base as though it had been there all
its life.

The children had noticed that particular stall when they came through
the square on their way to the meeting.  It was full of rather
unattractive oddments--chipped glasses and cracked jugs, saucers that
had lost their cups and cups that had lost their handles and things of
that nature.  But what had especially attracted their attention was the
stall-keeper.  They had noticed him because he looked so different from
all the other buyers and sellers in the market.  He was a dark-skinned
little man, with coal-black, frizzy hair and light brown eyes.  In the
lobes of his ears were small gold rings, and he had a large turquoise
and silver pin in his necktie.  He never kept still for a moment, but
waved his brown hands about incessantly, all the while jabbering to the
crowd in a strange accent.

Philip and Mary ran as fast as they could to the stall where their
bottle sat, between a cracked bedroom ewer and a decanter without a
stopper.  There was no crowd round the stall now, and the dark man was
just beginning to pack up his wares to go home.

"Please," said Philip, all out of breath, "can we have our bottle?"

"Your bottle, eh?" said the man.  "And what do you mean, your bottle,
please?" (He pronounced it pleasse, with a lot of s's in it.)

"This one, of course," said Mary, reaching up her hand to take it.  But
before she could touch it, the man had picked it up and stood holding
it by the neck in his dirty hand.

"Oh, thiss one, iss it?" he said.  "Forgive me, pleasse, but I did not
remember that you have bought it."

"Of course we haven't bought it," said Philip.  "It's ours."

The man looked at him with those very disturbing light brown eyes.

"If you have not bought it, how iss it yourss, pleasse?" he asked,
still keeping hold of the bottle.

"But it is ours," Philip persisted.

"You know it isn't yours, anyway," Mary added.

"But if it iss not mine, young lady," said the man, "what iss it doing
on my stall?  Can you tell me that, pleasse?"

"Well, it just came here," said Philip.  "I dropped it, and----  But
you must have seen it yourself."

"Indeed, young sir, but I never saw any such thing," the man answered
with a horrible grin.  "And bottless don't come on my stall by
themselves, nor jugss, nor saucerss.  And nothing comess off my stall
either, unless it iss properly paid for."  He held the bottle up to the
light in one hand and stroked it lovingly with the other.  "And this
bottle iss vairy, vairy expensive, I think."

"But look here----!" Philip began hotly and then stopped.  What on
earth was he to say or do?

"You were saying, pleasse?" said the man grinning more horribly than
ever.  He was still holding the bottle out of the children's reach,
gazing at it, as though he could see what was inside.

At that moment a large red hand suddenly reached across the stall and
closed on the stall-keeper's thin brown wrist, and a loud, rough voice
exclaimed, "Now then, you 'eathen devil, you 'and over that there
bottle!"

The children looked round, and saw a tall, shabbily dressed man, with a
rather coarse, red face and a very truculent expression.

"You let go my hand, pleasse, this instant!" cried the brown man,
trying to wriggle away.  He was no longer grinning, but looked very
savage.  "You let go my hand, I tell you, or I call the police!"

"Call the police indeed!  That's what I've half a mind to do!" said the
newcomer.  "I know your dirty tricks, you thieving varmint!"

And with a quick twist of his powerful hand he wrested the bottle from
the stall-keeper.

"Here you are, my little lady," he said to Mary, handing it to her with
a rather unsteady bow.  "Here's your propputy, safe an' sound."  His
little speech ended with a loud hiccup, which rather spoiled the effect.

"Thanks awfully!" said Philip, quite overcome with gratitude at having
been helped out of such an awkward situation.

"That's quite all right----" the man began, but he was interrupted
before he could say more by the stall-keeper.  He no longer looked
savage or frightened.  Instead, he had all at once become extremely
humble and submissive.

"Oh pleasse, young sir and young lady!" he began, twisting his hands
together in supplication.  "You will let me have this bottle, will you
not?  Look, I give you plenty moch money for him--all the money you
want!  He iss vairy, vairy fonny bottle, but not good for young lady
and gentleman.  Listen pleasse, I am only poor man, but I give ten
shillings for him...."

Philip and Mary thought he was even more disgusting talking in this new
style than he had been when he imagined he had succeeded in stealing
the bottle.  They turned away as quickly as they could.

"I give you five pounds for him!" he shouted after them.  "I give you
twenty pounds, I say!"  And then, as they still walked away, he called
out some angry words in a foreign language which they did not
understand.  It might have been only her imagination, but Mary, who was
holding the bottle, thought that at the sound of them the bottle itself
began to squirm in her hand.  It was an uncanny feeling, and she
gripped it as firmly as she possibly could.

"What are we going to do now?" said Philip, as soon as they were out of
earshot of the stall.  "There isn't another bus to Bolster for half an
hour, and we can't hang about here till then.  That brute would only
have another shot at pinching the bottle, for certain."

"You going Bolster way?" said their new acquaintance, who was still
close beside them.  "Let me give you a lift in my car."  (He ran his
words together in a rather curious way, so that what he said sounded
like "Lemmegivyerliftimmecar," but Philip was able to understand his
meaning.)

"It's awfully kind of you," said Philip doubtfully.  He was not at all
sure that this was exactly the kind of person his parents would wish
him and Mary to accept lifts from.  At the same time, after what had
happened, he was anxious not to say anything that could hurt his
feelings.  It was Mary who decided him.

"Oh, Philip, do let's!" she said.  "We promised Mummy to be home to
tea, and"--she whispered--"we don't want Sir Sigismund to get cross by
being shut up any longer than he has to be."

Philip nodded and turned to the stranger.

"We should like to come very much," he said.  "If you're sure it's not
giving you too much trouble."

"You're welcome," was the reply.  "All on me way 'ome.  C'm on.  She's
just round the corner."

He led the way to a side street, where a small, shabby car was
standing.  It was very dirty, and the back seats were crowded with such
a variety of objects, wrapped and unwrapped, that the children wondered
where they should find room for themselves.  But by dint of clearing
some of them on to the front seat and heaping others on the floor, the
man made just enough space for them, and Philip and Mary wedged
themselves in, between a sack of chicken food and an old and rather
smelly horse rug.  After all that had happened that afternoon, they
suddenly began to feel very tired.  They leaned back on the hard
leather cushions and looked at each other with a reassuring smile.
Everything was going right after all!  Mary put the bottle on the floor
between her feet for safety.

"It's all right, Sir Sigismund," she said softly to it.  "We shan't
keep you shut up long."

After several attempts, the car started with a roar and a rattle, and
they drove out rather jerkily into the main street.  There was a good
deal of traffic about, including some bewildered cattle which had been
sold in the market and were being driven away by their new owners.  But
their driver seemed to think that everything else on the road, whether
it went on wheels or on two legs or four, ought to get out of his way.
He kept his thumb pressed on the electric horn and fairly ploughed his
way through.  Several times it looked as though there must be an
accident, but somehow he just managed to avoid disaster.

The Jelfs had no car of their own, but Philip knew enough about cars to
feel that this was not the way to behave on a crowded road.  His
grandmother, for instance, certainly never drove in that fashion.  And
when other people on the road annoyed her by driving too close or
turning suddenly without giving a warning, she would sometimes murmur
uncomplimentary remarks about them beneath her breath, but she never,
like this driver, leant out of the window to roar abusive words at them
as she passed.  Philip felt quite ashamed to be driven in such a
manner, and he was thankful when they were clear of the crowds and out
in the open road.

The driver, too, seemed pleased to find himself out of the town--so
pleased, in fact, that he began to sing in a hoarse, throaty voice.  At
the same time, he increased speed, so that the little car fairly flew
along, bumping over the rough places and swaying from side to side at
every bend in the road.  The children found themselves hanging on to
the sack of chicken food, or anything else available, to avoid being
thrown from their seats as they lurched round the corners, of which
there were many between Eiderdown and Little Bolster.  It began to be
quite alarming.  Mary called to him to go more slowly, but between the
noise of the car and his own singing he evidently could not hear her,
for he only went the faster.

"Oh, Philip, I wish he wouldn't go so fast.  I'm frightened," said Mary
to her brother, when she saw that she could do nothing to check the
furious speed of the car.

"It's all right," said Philip reassuringly, though he felt anything but
comfortable himself.  "We're nearly home now.  That was Featherbed we
have just come through, and we shall be at Bolster Place in a minute.
Mummy'll be surprised to find us back so soon."

They flashed past Bolster Place so fast that they had no time for more
than a glimpse of the kitchen garden wall and missed the sun-dial
altogether.  After that they had to ascend a long slope, from the top
of which the road ran gently down into Little Bolster village.  At the
crest of the slope was a bend in the road, and the car went round it as
it had done all the other bends since Eiderdown, the engine roaring,
the wheels screaming and the driver singing at the top of his voice.
They had rounded the bend and started to come down the hill when the
children saw that just in front of them was an elderly man on a
bicycle, free-wheeling slowly down in the same direction.  Apparently
the noise of their approach startled him, for he looked over his
shoulder.  Then they recognized Mr. Chaffers.  Evidently he was on his
way home from Bolster Place.  The two-foot rule was sticking out of his
coat pocket and he was carrying a bag of tools in one hand and guiding
the bicycle with the other.  Whether it was the weight of the bag, or
the result of looking round, or the fright that the noise of the car
had given him, or all three put together, it was impossible to say, but
the bicycle suddenly began to wobble most alarmingly and strayed
towards the middle of the road.  The next moment they were right on top
of him.  The car swerved frantically, but it was going much too fast to
avoid him.  The front of the car charged straight into Mr. Chaffer's
back wheel with a hideous "Crash!"  The children had a fleeting glimpse
of the poor old man flying through the air in one direction, his bag of
tools in the other, while the car plunged onwards down the slope
towards the village as fast as ever.

"Stop!  Stop!" the children shouted together.  But at first it did not
seem as if the driver intended to stop.  It was only when Mary
pommelled him on his back and shoulders and screamed in his ear,
"You've knocked poor Mr. Chaffers down!  You _must_ stop!" that he took
any notice.  Then he put on his brakes and the car slithered to a stop
a good hundred yards beyond where the bicycle lay, badly damaged, in
the middle of the road.

The driver seemed in a very bad temper, as if what had happened was
anybody's fault but his own.

"Thiswotcomesotryintoelpeople," he muttered, running his words together
more than ever.  "'Seeafriendoyours?" he added, jerking his thumb over
his shoulder.

"Of course he's a friend of ours," said Philip indignantly.  "It's Mr.
Chaffers."

"Youbessgobackanseewotsappend," suggested the man, and leaning back in
his seat he opened the door of the car for them.  But he did not make
any move to get out himself.

Philip and Mary did not need any further prompting.  They jumped out at
once and ran back up the road as fast as their legs would carry them.

They found Mr. Chaffers sitting disconsolately at the side of the road,
with his feet in the ditch.  They were relieved to find that he did not
appear to be seriously injured.  He had been thrown into the hedge,
which had broken his fall, but he was badly scratched and bruised, and
he was, not unnaturally, very, very angry indeed.  When they came up to
him, he was picking thorns out of himself and uttering rude noises
under his breath.  He could hardly believe his eyes when he recognized
the children.

"Well, fancy seeing you two!" he exclaimed.  "Where do you spring from?"

"We were in the car," panted Philip, all out of breath from his run up
the hill.  "Oh, Mr. Chaffers, I am sorry----"

"In the car!"  Mr. Chaffers was so surprised that he forgot his
injuries for a moment.  "How did you come to be with a fellow like
that?  Why, he must have been drunk the way he was driving!"

"He gave us a lift from Eiderdown because we couldn't get on the bus,"
Mary explained.

Philip said thoughtfully, "Yes.  I think he must have been drinking.
That would explain a lot of things."

"And why didn't he stop when he saw what he'd done?" Mr. Chaffers went
on wrathfully.

"He did stop when we told him to," said Mary.  "He's just half-way down
the hill now, and we ran back to see if we could help."

Mr. Chaffers with a groan got stiffly to his feet and looked down the
road.

"He ought to have come back hisself," he muttered, and then exclaimed
angrily, "Look at him now, the brute!"

The children looked too.  The car was no longer where they had left it.
Instead, it was moving slowly away, down the bill.  As they watched, it
gathered speed, turned the corner at the bottom and in a moment was
lost to sight.

"Gosh!  That's pretty cool!" said Philip disgustedly.  "To run away
like that after an accident----"

He was interrupted by a cry from Mary.

"Philip!  Sir Sigismund!  The bottle's still in the car!"

The children looked at each other in silent horror.  For a moment they
forgot all about Mr. Chaffers and his troubles.  They were conscious
only of one thing--that Sir Sigismund Kaufman-Fortescue, on whom all
their hopes depended, turned into smoke and corked up in a bottle, was
being driven further and further away from them by a drunken man whose
name they did not know, to a destination they could not guess.




CHAPTER NINE

AFTER THE ACCIDENT

"Did you get his number?" said Mr. Chaffers anxiously, still gazing
after the vanished car.

Philip shook his head.  He was too overwhelmed by the disaster that had
happened to trust himself to speak.

"Ought to have had his number," Mr. Chaffers grumbled.  "This is a job
for the police, this is.  Drunk in charge of a car, dangerous driving,
failing to stop after an accident--I'll have him shut up!  And my
damages, too--just look at my poor old bike!"

He hobbled out into the road and picked up his damaged bicycle.  The
back wheel was smashed to pieces, and the handle-bars were bent all out
of shape.  He carried it to the side of the road and then began to look
for his tools, which were scattered all over the place.

"Ah!" he exclaimed suddenly, almost with a touch of his old manner.
"Of course, I'd forgot, you were in the car with him, weren't you?
What's his name?"

"We don't know," said Philip miserably.

"Well, you know where he lives, for sure.  We can trace him quick
enough that way."

"But we don't know even that," Philip told him.  "He just said Little
Bolster was on his way home and offered to give us a lift.  I wish to
goodness we'd never taken it."

"That's bad, that's bad.  But there's no need for you to upset
yourselves about it," said Mr. Chaffers in a kindly tone, seeing that
both children were near to tears.  "Nobody can say it was any fault of
yours.  Thank'ye, my dear," he added to Mary, who had just handed him
his cap which she had discovered in the ditch.  "And I reckon I ought
to be glad you two were there," he went on.  "You'll be a fine pair of
witnesses for me if I bring this case to Court--that is, if you
wouldn't mind coming and speaking for me when we catch this fellow?"

"Of course we wouldn't," Mary answered him.  "It isn't that that's
worrying us.  You see, we left something of ours in the car and he's
gone off with it."

"Oh, so he's a thief as well, the dirty vagabond!" said Mr. Chaffers.

Philip felt that he must be fair, even to a man who had caused so much
trouble.

"Well, he hasn't stolen it exactly," he said.  "I don't think he knows
it's there, actually.  But it's frightfully important and we simply
must get it back."

"Ah!" said Mr. Chaffers.  "Is that my spirit level lying over there?
Perhaps you'd pick it up for me, it hurts me to stoop after hitting the
hedge so hard with my back.  Thank ye, I'm much obliged.  And what was
it, exactly, you'd left in that ruffian's car?"

Philip hesitated, but Mary said at once, "It was a bottle.  The one we
found at Bolster Place yesterday."

"Ah," said Mr. Chaffers.  "I remember.  What did you want to go
trapesing about to Eiderdown with that for?"

This was something the children felt they could not possibly answer,
but luckily Mr. Chaffers did not pursue the subject.  Instead, with
their help, he set about retrieving all the tools that had fallen from
his bag, and it was not long before they had been reassembled.  They
were little the worse for wear except for a small handsaw, the teeth of
which had suffered from falling on the road.  Mr. Chaffers grieved over
this even more than he had done over his bicycle and murmured "Ah!" as
he looked at it in a deep, fierce tone that boded ill for the wrongdoer
when he should lay hands on him.

When this had been done, they set off to the village.  Mr. Chaffers,
who was limping very badly, insisted on carrying his wrecked machine,
while Philip and Mary managed the heavy bag of tools between them.
This made their progress very slow, and it was lucky that the police
station, where Mr. Chaffers wished to call first, was at the near end
of the village.  The police sergeant to whom he spoke was extremely
sympathetic and was hopeful of tracing the car driver before long.

"The car must have been damaged in the collision," he said.  "I'll
notify my headquarters and they'll have a sharp look out kept for any
car that looks as if it's been in an accident lately."  He turned to
the children.  "You'd recognize this man if you saw him again?" he
asked.

"Yes!" Philip and Mary said together.

"Good!  I daresay we shall be sending along for you to identify him one
of these days.  He sounds as if he might be one of those chicken
farmers up Bedstead way.  If so, we'll pull him in, never fear."

"Philip," said Mary as they left the police-station, where they had
left Mr. Chaffers still conferring with the sergeant, "you never said
anything to him about the bottle."

"I know I didn't," said Philip gloomily.  "What earthly good would it
have been?  He'd not have been a bit interested in an old bottle left
behind in the car, and if we'd told him what was inside it, he would
simply not have believed us."

Mary tried to imagine what it would be like trying to explain to a
policeman that Sir Sigismund Kaufman-Fortescue was cooped up in a
bottle in the back of a ramshackle motor-car, along with a sack of
chicken food and an old horse rug, and she had to agree that it was
impossible.

"I do feel horribly tired," she said.  "I wish home wasn't the other
side of the village.  I seem to have walked miles and miles to-day."

"We might pick up a bus at the Seven Sleepers," Philip said.  (The
Seven Sleepers was the name of the village inn.)  "That would save our
legs the last bit of the way, at least.  It ought to be due about now.
Let's hurry, Mary, in case it passes us before we get there."

Hardly were the words out of his mouth, however, when with a loud
"Honk!" the bus from Eiderdown sailed round the corner behind them and
swept past to the stopping place at the Seven Sleepers two hundred
yards further on, without taking any notice of their frantic waving.

"Blow!" said Philip.  "That's torn it!  There won't be another one for
half an hour at least, so we shall just have to walk the rest of the
way.  What's the matter, Mary?"

Mary had gone quite pale and was staring after the disappearing bus.

"Didn't you see?" she said.  "He was in the bus!"

"Who was in the bus?  Our car-driver, do you mean?"

"No, of course not," said Mary impatiently.  "That horrid brown man in
the Market."

"Good Lord!" said Philip.  "Are you sure?"

"Of course I am.  You know my eyes are--are pretty good," said Mary.
She did not want to hurt Philip's feelings by reminding him how much
sharper her sight was than his.

"Do you think he noticed us?" Philip asked.

"Must have, I should think.  He was looking out of the window on our
side and the bus came close past us.  Oh, Philip, do you think he's
come after the bottle?"

"Well," said Philip with a dismal attempt at humour, "if he knows where
the bottle is, he knows more than we do, that's all."

"He did seem frightfully keen on it," said Mary.  "Almost as if he knew
what sort of a bottle it was.  Do you think he could be a Djinn, too?"

"No," said Philip with emphasis.  "He isn't.  I'm sick of Djinns,
anyway," he added.

They walked on for some way in silence.

"I wish to goodness you hadn't left the bottle behind when you got out
of the car," Philip said at last.

"I like that!" Mary answered crossly.  "It was you just as much as me.
You'd been carrying it about all day, hadn't you?"

"Well anyhow," Philip retorted, "it was your idea taking a lift in that
rotten car.  That was what made all the trouble."

"I couldn't tell he was going to knock down Mr. Chaffers and then run
away, could I?" said Mary indignantly.  "He seemed quite friendly at
the Market."

"Well, it's no use arguing about it," said Philip.  "It was both our
faults, really.  I suppose he ran away because he was scared when he
saw what he had done.  Especially if he was a bit drunk."

"Perhaps when he gets over being drunk he'll bring the bottle back,"
said Mary.  "After all, he knows it's ours."

"Much more likely to open it, I should think," replied Philip.  "It'll
give him a bit of a shock when he does, won't it?  And Sir Sigismund,
too," he added with a laugh.

"Oh, don't, Philip!" Mary protested.  "It's much too serious to make
jokes about."

"I know it is," said Philip soberly, and they trudged on for some way
without speaking.

"I've just thought of something," Mary observed, as their house came
into view.  "How much are we going to tell Mummy?"

"Nothing about the bottle," said Philip decisively.  "That would be
absolutely fatal."

"No," Mary agreed, "not about the bottle.  But about the car and the
accident and everything.  After all, Mr. Chaffers is bound to tell
Granny and then Granny will tell Mummy."

"You can never be sure what Granny will or won't do," said Philip.
"Good old H.M.S. Unpredictable!"

"But she may tell her," Mary persisted.  "And anyway, if we have the
police calling about the man in the car, then everything's bound to
come out."

"And then there'll be a row," remarked Philip philosophically.  "Daddy
will say we've been--what does he call it?--secretive, which always
annoys him.  Well, I can't help that.  We are being secretive anyway,
and there'd be a much bigger row if he knew what had really happened."

"But what are we going to say if Mummy asks us why we're so late?" Mary
said.

"Well, then we shall have to tell her about the accident," said Philip.
"But if she doesn't, I vote we keep quiet and just see what happens."

As it turned out, Mrs. Jelf did not ask them anything.  When they
reached home it was to find that their father had arrived just before
them, having got back from the City much earlier than usual.  He was
far too busy talking about himself to allow anyone else a word in
edgeways.  He was like that sometimes, especially when things hadn't
been going well.

"It wasn't the least good trying to get any work done to-day," he
complained to Mrs. Jelf as he drank his tea.  "I simply couldn't
concentrate on anything."

Mrs. Jelf made sympathetic noises.

"You didn't hear anything from Sir Sigismund, I suppose?" she said.  "I
thought he might perhaps have----"

"Sir Sigismund!" said Mr. Jelf so violently that he spilled some of his
hot tea on his trousers, which did not improve his temper.  "I should
think I have heard from him!  That's the whole of the trouble.  There
was a letter at the office by the midday post--he must have written it
as soon as he got home last night--to say that on careful consideration
he had decided that the proposition I had put before him did not appeal
to him.  I don't believe it for a moment.  For one thing, he hadn't had
the time to consider an important project like that carefully.  It was
simply that he'd lost his temper over Philip's piece of stupidity last
night.  He was quite different when I was talking to him."

"Don't you think if you could talk to him again you might make things
all right?" Mrs. Jelf said.

This well-meant suggestion only made Mr. Jelf angrier than ever.  "I
rang the fellow up at his office as soon as I got his letter," he said,
"and I was told he was too busy to see me.  I tried again after lunch
and they said he had gone down to the country.  I'm sure he is trying
to avoid me.  If I could only see him, just for five minutes..."

Mr. Jelf went on talking in this strain for a great deal more than five
minutes, and it made Philip and Mary feel worse every time he repeated
it.  "If he could only see Sir Sigismund," indeed!  If only they could!
Finally, by way of a diversion, Philip said, "Do you mind if we put on
the wireless, Daddy?  It's just time for the six o'clock news."

"I suppose you can if you want to," said his father moodily.

They listened to the news without any great interest until at the end
the announcer said: "Here is a police message.  Missing from his home
at Great Mattress, Slumbershire, Sir Sigismund Kaufman-Fortescue, the
well-known financier.  Aged sixty-two, five feet four inches high,
heavily built and bald.  He was last seen wearing a checked tweed suit
with a pink carnation in the button-hole.  Sir Sigismund was due this
afternoon to address a meeting at the Memorial Hall, Eiderdown.  He
attended the meeting, but shortly after commencing his speech he left
the platform somewhat suddenly, and has not since been seen.  He is
believed to be suffering from loss of memory.  Will any person having
news of his whereabouts please communicate with the Chief Constable of
Slumbershire, telephone number Bedstead 6666, or with the nearest
police station."

"That," said Mr. Jelf savagely, as he turned off the wireless, "that
puts the lid on it!"




CHAPTER TEN

AT THE POLICE-STATION

Mary slept in a little room of her own at the top of the house.  It had
two windows, a large one that looked out on to the garden and a small
one that faced in the direction of the village.  There was a high hedge
which cut off the view of the road, but at one place there was a gap in
it where a tree had blown down the winter before, so that the head of
anyone passing along was just visible at that point from the small
window.  Consequently this window was Mary's favourite.  Standing on
tiptoe, with her chin on a level with the window-sill, she could pick
out the postman's flat cap as he trudged up with the morning's letters,
or the tousled yellow hair of the boy who delivered the newspaper, or
the head and shoulders of the milkman, standing up in his cart as he
went his round.  Often after breakfast she would run up to her room to
catch a glimpse of her father's black felt hat bobbing up and down as
he scampered down the road to the bus stop on his way to work.  It gave
her a deliciously superior feeling to be able to peep out at all those
people without their knowing that they were being observed, all the
more so because she had found by experiment that this was the only
window in the house from which this particular view was to be had.
What was more, she had never told anybody else about it, not even
Philip, who was sometimes mystified by the way in which she always
seemed to know to a minute when the post was going to come--especially
at Christmas, when the post is exceptionally important.

On the morning after their memorable visit to Eiderdown, Mary was
finishing dressing and at the same time engaged in her favourite
occupation of spying on the road from the village.  This naturally made
dressing a rather slow and chancy business, since it is extremely
difficult to look at two things at once, and buttons that are done up
by feel have a habit of connecting with the wrong buttonholes.  But
without knowing why, Mary felt certain that it was especially important
that morning to keep her eyes on the gap in the hedge, even if it meant
making her late for breakfast.  She had no idea who she was likely to
see, whether it would be their car-driver coming back full of apologies
to return the bottle, or Sir Sigismund himself, just released from
captivity, on his way to explain to Mr. Foliot-Foljambe why he had left
his meeting so suddenly, or--worst of all--the sinister brown-faced
stall-keeper still in search of the "vairy fonny bottle" that he had
tried to steal, but she was sure there would be someone.

She was trying to kick her feet into her shoes without looking down
when a head appeared in the gap.  It belonged to none of the people she
had thought of, but all the same her heart gave a jump.  For the head
was that of a policeman, and he was coming up the road towards the
house.  There was no mistaking the shape of his helmet.  Mary thought
very hard for a moment, and then, without waiting even to do up her
shoes, she ran quickly downstairs.  In the hall she stopped and
listened for a moment.  There was a frizzly sound of frying from the
kitchen, which meant that her mother was cooking breakfast, as Mrs.
Marrable was still on her holiday.  From the bathroom came the sound of
her father stropping his razor.  She could hear Philip banging about in
his bedroom.  The coast was clear.  Without further hesitation Mary
flew out of the front door, out of the garden gate and into the road.
She met the policeman just before he reached the house.

The policeman eyed her rather strangely.  "Hullo!" he said.  "You're
out rather early, aren't you, miss?"

"Please," said Mary, "were you coming to see me?"

The policeman looked at her again, and this time there was a twinkle in
his eye.  He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, consulted it,
and then said, "Miss Mary Jelf?"

"Yes.  That's me."

"Master Philip Jelf?"

"That's my brother.  He's still indoors."

The policeman folded the paper up and put it away.

"I've been sent up to ask your father and mother----" he began.

"Oh, please don't!" Mary said quickly.

"There's nothing for you to be frightened of," said the policeman
kindly.  "It's simply to ask them if they'd arrange for you two to step
down to the station for a minute or two--after you've had your
breakfast and perhaps tidied up a bit," he added, with another amused
glance at Mary.

"But you needn't ask _them_," said Mary earnestly.  "It's _us_ you
want, isn't it?  And of course we'll come."

"Ah," said the policeman, "that's all very well, but we can't go
fetching boys and girls down to police stations without telling their
fathers and mothers, can we?  Some people wouldn't like it, and I'm
sure your father and mother wouldn't."  And he started to move in the
direction of the house.

"If you did tell them they'd simply hate it!" said Mary.

Her voice must have sounded pretty desperate, for the policeman stopped
and looked at her.

"Eh?" he said.

"Look here," Mary went on.  "Is what you want to see me and Philip
about something to do with what happened to Mr. Chaffers yesterday?"

"Well," said the policeman, "suppose it is.  I tell you, missy, there's
nothing at all for you to be frightened about----"

"I'm _not_ frightened," Mary protested.  "And no more is Philip.  And I
do promise we'll tell you everything--everything you want to know, that
is.  It's simply that--well, it'll make everything so complicated if
Daddy and Mummy are brought into it."  One of her shoes was coming off
and she hopped up and down trying to shuffle back into it.  "Daddy's
very worried just now and it's most important that he shouldn't be
upset or anything," she added in her most appealing voice.

The policeman was looking quite sympathetic by now, but he was still
doubtful.

"That's all very well," he said, "and I'm sure we don't want to upset
anybody, but we have to keep to rules, you know.  There's a rule that
juveniles are not to be interviewed except in the presence of a parent
or guardian.  Our inspector is very strict about it."

Mary suddenly had an idea.

"Parent or guardian?" she said.  "Is that a regulation?"

"That's right, miss."

"Solidified?"

"I beg your pardon, miss?"

"Never mind.  The point is, a guardian is as good as a parent?"

"Nothing's as good as a parent," said the policeman solemnly.  "Nothing
in the world."

"I mean, when it comes to interviewing ju--ju----"

"Juveniles, is the word, miss."

"Juveniles, then--a guardian counts as a parent in the regulation?"

"That's so."

"All right, then.  Mr. Chaffers will be the guardian.  He'll have to be
at the interview, because he was the person who had the accident, and
he can guard me and Philip beautifully and Daddy and Mummy needn't know
anything about it!"

The policeman said nothing for a moment.  His face had gone rather red
and his shoulders were shaking.  He took off his helmet and wiped his
forehead with his handkerchief.  Then he said, "You win, missy.  I
don't know what the inspector will say if this comes to his ears, but
I'll take the risk.  Will you promise that you and your brother will be
down at the station at ten o'clock sharp?"

"I swear we will," said Mary.  "Honest Afreet."

"Eh?"

"Nothing, it's just a private swear-word," Mary explained.

This time the policeman laughed out loud, but he seemed satisfied, and
Mary ran back to the house as fast as she could.

"You're late for breakfast again, Mary," Mr. Jelf complained as she
entered the dining-room.  "Why can't you get up in good time?"

Considering that she had got up specially early and had done what felt
like a good day's work already, Mary considered that this was decidedly
unfair, but she made no reply.  In any case, her father was far too
busy eating his breakfast in double quick time so as not to miss his
bus to expect any answer.  Her mother was different.  She took one
quick look at Mary and said,

"Good gracious, Mary, what has come over you?  Your frock's buttoned up
crooked, you haven't combed your hair properly and--really! at your
age!--you've actually got your shoes on the wrong feet!" (So _that's_
why my feet felt so uncomfortable while I was talking to the policeman,
thought Mary.)  "One would think you had never been taught how to dress
yourself," her mother went on.  "Go upstairs, and please don't come
down again until you are respectable!"

Mary obediently went up to her room, and when she looked in the glass
she had to admit that her mother was justified, and she began to
understand why the policeman had stared at her so strangely.  It is
extraordinary what a difference it makes to dressing when you are
looking out of the window all the time instead of at yourself.

By the time she had put things to rights, her father had left the
house.  As soon as possible after breakfast she told Philip her news.
He was pleased and excited.

"If they want us down at the police station," he said, "it must be
because they've caught the man who knocked Mr. Chaffers over, and that
means they've found his car and _that_ means they've found the bottle,
too.  So everything's just perfect!  Thank goodness you managed to head
the policeman off seeing Daddy and Mummy!  Now we shall be able to put
everything right without their knowing anything about it."

"We can't be sure yet about getting Sir Sigismund back," said Mary
cautiously.  "After all, the man may have opened the bottle.  You said
it would be the first thing he would do, didn't you?"

"Well, I was jolly well wrong, then," declared Philip.  "Because if
he'd opened it he'd have had a wish, and if he'd had a wish, the first
thing he'd have wished for would have been that the police shouldn't
catch him, and they have."

This reasoning quite convinced Mary, and it was with high hopes that
the two of them made their way to the village.  At the police-station
they found the sergeant whom they had seen the day before and the
policeman who had met Mary that morning.  They were talking together
and appeared to be enjoying a private joke.

"I'm afraid you'll have to wait a little," the sergeant told them.
"Your guardian isn't here yet."

Presently Mr. Chaffers arrived.  He had a piece of sticking-plaster on
his forehead and he was still limping, but he was quite cheerful.

"Ah!" he exclaimed.  "So you've got the ruffian, have you?  That's a
smart piece of work, sergeant, a very smart piece of work!"

"Well," said the sergeant modestly, "it wasn't such a very difficult
job, really.  Was it?" he added, turning to the other policeman.

"Lord bless you, no, sergeant!" said the policeman with a laugh.

"How did you catch him?" asked Mr. Chaffers eagerly.  "Did he show
fight?"

"You tell him, constable," said the sergeant.

Mary's policeman drew himself up very stiffly, looked fixedly at the
opposite wall, put his hands to his sides, and began to recite in a
strange sing-song voice:

"At five forty-two p.m. on Wednesday the ninth instant in consequence
of a telephone message received from the omnibus terminus at Bedstead I
proceeded by bicycle to a point on the main Little Bolster-Bedstead
road approximately one and a quarter miles to the north-east of Little
Bolster and one hundred yards south-west of the Pillow cross-roads
omnibus stop arriving there at six five p.m."

He stopped to take breath and then went on as before.

"The road at this point describes a sharp right-hand turn and I
observed that the hedge on the left-hand side of the road had been
broken down indicating that a large object had recently passed through
it.  Dismounting from my bicycle I proceeded through the hedge where I
found a ten-horse-power saloon motor-car index number A.D. ten
sixty-six stationary in a ploughed field.  In the driver's seat of the
motor-car I found the prisoner.  He was asleep and I formed the opinion
that he was under the influence of alcohol."

"What did I tell you?" exclaimed Mr. Chaffers.  The policeman frowned
at him, and then looked back at the wall and went on:

"I awakened him and he gave his name as William Catchpole National
Registration number ABCK Six Eight One aged thirty-five chicken farmer
residing at the Henneries Sleepy Hollow Bedstead.  I procured
assistance and conveyed him to the police station.  He was there
charged with being drunk in charge of a motor vehicle driving to the
danger of the public failing to stop after an accident and wilful
damage to a hedgerow growing upon the verge of a public highway.  He
was cautioned and said"--here the policeman produced a note-book,
thumbed over the leaves until he found the place he wanted, and then
read--"'Yes'".  He put the note-book back in his pocket and concluded,
"The car which was in a damaged condition was subsequently conveyed to
the police station."

The policeman unstiffened himself, to show that the recitation was over.

"Ah!" said Mr. Chaffers.

"But what really happened?" asked Mary, who was quite bewildered by all
the long words.

"I've just told you, 'aven't I?" said the constable in quite a human
voice.  "This chap Catchpole, when he got outside the village, went
sound asleep in his car and drove through the 'edge at the corner.  The
bus driver saw the car in the field with him inside it and tipped us
off when he got to the end of his run.  So I went off and brought him
in.  That's all."

"It sounds much easier that way," remarked Philip.

"It doesn't do to make things sound too easy," said the sergeant
reprovingly.  "Our inspector doesn't like it.  And now," he went on in
an official voice, "bring in William Catchpole!"

The policeman darted out through a door in the back and came back in a
moment with a man whom the children at once recognized as their driver
of the day before.  He looked a sorry figure.  His clothes were stained
and crumpled, his face was quite pale and he had a very sheepish
expression.

"'Ullo kids," said William Catchpole in a rather hoarse voice.  "Sorry
about yesterday.  'Ope you got 'ome all right."  He looked at Mr.
Chaffers, and seemed more sheepish than ever.  "No bones broke, I 'ope,
chum?" he said.  "All my fault, I own.  I 'ad a drop too much in the
Market."

At a nod from the sergeant, the constable took him away again.

"So that's that!" said the sergeant in a satisfied tone.  "There'll be
no more trouble now.  You can run along home, kids.  Thank you for
coming down."

The children didn't in the least want to run along home yet.

"Please," said Philip, "can we have a look at the car?  We left
something of ours in it, and it's frightfully important."

The sergeant led them to a yard at the back of the police station.  Mr.
Chaffers came with them.  There was the car, looking shabbier than
ever.  Its radiator was smashed in, there were scratches and dents all
along its sides, and where its headlamps ought to have been were some
tangled bits of the hedge.  The sergeant opened the back and the
children saw the familiar jumble of oddments which they remembered from
the day before.  Everything had been thrown on the floor in confusion.
Philip reached inside and pulled out the smelly horse rug and then the
sack of chicken food, which were on top of the heap.  That left still a
lot of other things.  He found first a dog-collar with brass studs on
it, next a pony's halter, then a wireless battery, a tin of kerosene
(which had leaked), a stone hot-water bottle, a newspaper parcel
smelling strongly of fish, a packet of breakfast cereal, a bag of very
squashy tomatoes and a new garden trowel.  There was nothing else.
Absolutely nothing.  He turned to Mary with a very white face.

"It's gone," he said.  "The bottle isn't there any more."




CHAPTER ELEVEN

FOOT-PRINTS IN THE PLOUGH

"It's gone," Philip repeated, looking utterly woebegone.

"Ah!" rumbled Mr. Chaffers sympathetically.

Mary said nothing, because she was sure that if she opened her mouth
she would start to howl, and she was determined not to break down in
front of the police sergeant.

"Well," said Philip at last, "I suppose we'd better be getting home
now."

They trailed dismally out of the police station yard.

Mr. Chaffers followed them.  He was obviously sorry for their
disappointment and did his best to comfort them.

"I'll look about at Bolster Place this afternoon," he said.  "Maybe
there's another of them bottles lying about."

"No," said Philip wretchedly, "I'm quite sure there isn't.  But thank
you, all the same," he added.

"You're quite sure it was in the car?" Mr. Chaffers asked.

"Oh yes, it was in the car all right.  And while that Catchpole person
was asleep someone must have pinched it."

"Ah?" said Mr. Chaffers, in a rather unbelieving tone, "and what should
make anyone want to steal a thing like that, I wonder?"

"Well, you see," Philip said, "this was rather a special sort of
bottle."

"It was frightfully valuable," put in Mary, who had decided to take Mr.
Chaffers at least partly into their confidence.  "A man in the market
at Eiderdown wanted to give us twenty pounds for it."

"Ah!"  There was no doubt that Mr. Chaffers was now thoroughly
impressed with the seriousness of the matter.

"And what's more," Mary went on, "I bet that he's the man who's pinched
it!"

"The ruffian!" said Mr. Chaffers.  "How do you make that out?"

But Mary, full of her idea, was by now talking to Philip rather than to
him.

"Don't you see?" she said.  "He must have seen us going off in
Catchpole's car and followed along by the next bus."

"But," said Philip, "he saw us when we were walking through the
village.  If he was after us, he'd have got off at the Seven Sleepers."

"He wasn't after us.  He was after the bottle, and he could see we
hadn't got it with us then.  He went on----"

"By Jove, yes!" Philip interrupted.  "Didn't your policeman say the car
was just this side of the Pillow cross-roads stop?  If he got out
there, he'd have seen the car for certain.  Ten to one he went back to
have a look and that's when he pinched the bottle.  Oh, Lord, Mary!
This is awful!  If he's got it, we shall never see it again!"

Mr. Chaffers, meanwhile, had been turning his head from side to side,
listening first to one child and then to the other, with growing
perplexity.

"Here," he said.  "Who is this fellow, anyway?"

"A man in the Market," Philip explained.  "He had a stall of china and
glass and things.  He was brown and eastern-looking and talked in a
queer, foreign way."

"Ah!" said Mr. Chaffers.  "I know the sort.  Real flibbertigibbets,
they are.  I've seen 'em about the markets hereabouts.  Here to-day and
gone to-morrow.  But if you want to catch him, why don't you tell this
smart policeman fellow?  Maybe he could lay his hands on him."

Philip shook his head.  "No," he said.  "It's no good telling the
police about this.  Even if they did find him, it wouldn't be any good.
It's the bottle we want, and if we don't get hold of that soon, it'll
be too late, anyway."

"Well," said Mr. Chaffers, looking more puzzled than ever, "you know
your business best, I suppose. But if I ever lay my hands on this
fellow, I'll----  Hold on, though!" he added.  "We don't know for sure
that this thing is stolen, do we?  Suppose it had just been thrown out
of the car when it went through the hedge?  It may be there still."

"Oh, Philip, do you think it might?" cried Mary.

"There's always a chance," said Philip.  "We ought to have thought of
that before."

"I'll just run over there this afternoon on my bicycle and have a
look," said Mr. Chaffers.  "No, dash it!  I'd forgot.  Of course, I
can't now, along of that Catchpole feller, and it's too far for me to
walk with this leg of mine.  I tell you what, though, I've just
remembered, I've a couple of men going over Pillow way to do a little
job of painting.  They can give us a lift out in the van and wait while
we have a look round.  You can walk home and I'll go on to Pillow to
see how the job's going there."

"If you're sure that's not too much trouble," said Philip, but Mr.
Chaffers shook his head.

"If that bottle's worth twenty pounds, it's worth a little trouble," he
said.  "And I shan't forget in a hurry how you helped me when I had
that tumble yesterday."

At that they parted, agreeing to meet at Mr. Chaffers's builder's yard
at two o'clock that afternoon.


When they arrived at the yard, the children found a van drawn up,
already almost entirely filled with ladders, planks, pots of paint and
two agreeable young men called Bert and Curly.  Bert had bright red
hair, and Curly, in spite of being young, was quite bald.  They made
room for the children on two benches which ran the length of the van,
while Mr. Chaffers sat in front with the driver.  The inside of the
van, which was covered in over the top and open at the back, was rather
stuffy, but smelled deliciously of paint and turpentine.  On the way,
Bert read a paper called The Greyhound Racing Special, and Curly sang
very melodiously a song of which the first words were, "If you'll be my
honey, I'll be your bread and butter man," but as he always broke down
after a few bars and had to start again, Philip and Mary never learned
any more of it, much as they would have liked to.

Presently the van stopped and Mr. Chaffers came round to the back.  The
children got out and the van drove away round the corner.

"I told him it was dangerous to stop on the bend," explained Mr.
Chaffers.  "So it is, but I wasn't going to have those young fellers
laughing at me, going treasure-hunting at my time of life."

There was no doubt that they were at the right place.  Right in the
middle of the corner there was a huge gaping hole in the hedge, just as
the policeman had said, and leading up to and away from it were the
tyre-marks of a car, some of them surrounded by lumps of squashed mud,
which showed where the car had gone when the police came to tow it out
of the ploughed field.

Philip and Mary followed Mr. Chaffers through the gap and into the
field on the other side.  Here the tyre marks became much deeper, and
there was a big depression where the car had sunk down into the soft
ground and flattened the ridges of earth.  On every side were the large
foot-prints of the men who had hauled the car away.

They looked everywhere--on the side of the road, in the ditch, in the
hedge and in the furrows of the plough itself.  But nowhere did they
find anything, except some broken bits of glass, which had evidently
come from the lamps or windscreen of the unlucky car.

"You're sure you did leave it in the car?" Mr. Chaffers asked again,
when it was clear that their search was fruitless.

"Yes," said the children in weary unison.

"Then I'm afraid it does look as though someone's gone off with it,"
said Mr. Chaffers.  "You can go on looking if you like, but I must be
getting on, or Bert and Curly will be wondering what's become of me."
He was turning to go, when he stopped.  "Just a minute," he said.
"What do you make of that?"

He was pointing to the ground at a spot a little further inside the
field than where the car had lain.  It was a rather blurred mark on the
top of a ridge of plough, and it certainly looked like a light
foot-print.

"No policeman ever made that," said Mr. Chaffers.  He squatted down and
looked along the ground, shading his eyes from the sun.  "Look!" he
said.

Philip and Mary squatted down, too, and followed with their eyes the
direction in which he was pointing.  Then they could see, running
across the field, a line of similar little marks, just denting the top
of each ridge.

"Someone's walked along that way," said Philip.

"Ah!" said Mr. Chaffers.  "But which way?"

They followed the track a short distance, and it was not long before
they found the undoubted mark of a slender toe.  Whoever left the
foot-prints had evidently been walking away from the car.

"Follow along and see where it leads to," said Mr. Chaffers.  "It's no
good asking me to walk on this plough-land."

Philip ran off across the field.  Once he had picked it up, it was easy
to follow the track.  Mary was soon outdistanced and returned to Mr.
Chaffers.  Presently they saw Philip coming back.

"The track went through the hedge at the end of the field," he said as
soon as he came up with them.  "There's a hard lane on the other side,
and I couldn't follow it beyond that.  But I've found something--look!"

He held up a small, bright object.

"Oh, but I've seen that before!" said Mary at once.  "It's--it's--I
know, it's the tie-pin that man at the stall was wearing."

"He must have dropped it getting through the hedge," said Philip.
"There's no doubt now who's got the bottle, Mary."

"No," said Mary forlornly, "there isn't.  Oh, Philip, how rotten it all
is!"

"It's a pretty pin, anyway," Mr. Chaffers pointed out, in a well-meant
attempt to cheer them up.  "And I reckon you're entitled to keep it.
Well, I don't pay Bert and Curly two and sevenpence an hour with
overtime at a time and a half to hang about in the van while I go
trapesing over fields and hedges.  I must be off."

The children shook hands with him on the road.

"Perhaps I'll be seeing you again at Bolster Place soon," he said.
"You know your Granny's moving in next week?  Ah!  You won't know the
place when we've finished tidying it up."

Then he limped round the corner to where Curly was still trying to get
the tune of "If you'll be my honey, I'll be your bread and butter man,"
and they heard the van drive away.

"Well," said Philip, as they faced the walk home, "we've got a tie-pin
to show for it, anyhow.  We'll have to take turns to wear it, Mary.
But it isn't much compared with the bottle.  Ten thousand pounds!  Poor
Daddy!"

"And poor Sir Sigismund!" sighed Mary.




CHAPTER TWELVE

AN OLD FRIEND REAPPEARS

"Do you realize, Mary," said Philip, "that we've got to go back to
school the day after to-morrow?"

"Of course I do," said Mary.  She had indeed been thinking of little
else for the last three days.  It was on Thursday that they had made
the fatal discovery in the ploughed field.  This was Monday, and their
holidays came to an end on Wednesday.  Friday, Saturday and Sunday had
been awful.  The papers had been full of the disappearance of Sir
Sigismund, especially the Sunday ones, which had the most
blood-curdling suggestions about his possible fate.  The police were
hunting for him everywhere, rivers had been dragged, bloodhounds had
sniffed vainly all round Great Mattress and the Memorial Hall at
Eiderdown and the wireless had repeated the message about him so often
they that all knew it by heart.  It was dreadful to the children to
have so much vital knowledge bottled up inside them and not be able to
do anything about it.  It was still worse to see their father getting
every day more and more worried and anxious and to know that they were
really responsible for his trouble.  The fact that he never dreamed of
connecting them with Sir Sigismund vanishing only made them feel more
wretched.  Indeed, if it hadn't been for the possibility that they
might still be able to put things right, they would have been only too
glad to get away from home and go back to their respective schools that
very day.

"The day after to-morrow," Philip repeated.  "That only leaves us one
day to do anything in."

"Two days," Mary corrected him.

"No, only one.  To-day we're going to London for the dentist and the
theatre."

"Of course," said Mary, "I'd forgotten."

It showed how upsetting the last few days had been that Mary should
have forgotten that.  The dentist was nothing--he was a particularly
nice man and hardly ever hurt at all--but the theatre was by
long-standing custom the final fling of the summer holidays.  In the
ordinary way, Philip and Mary looked forward to it with tremendous
excitement.  But now it simply meant one more precious chance missed of
doing something towards straightening out the tangle in which they
found themselves, and they almost wished they were not going.

There is, however, something about a theatre that just can't fail to
cheer you up, however gloomy you may have been beforehand.  Mrs. Jelf
had been quite worried about the children's lack of enthusiasm on the
way up to London, and she had wondered whether they were not both
secretly suffering from toothache and afraid that the dentist would
have to do something drastic and painful to cure it.  But the dentist
quickly reassured her on that point, and although they ate a poor lunch
for the occasion, once they were in their seats at the theatre, among
the lights and bustle and chatter, fingering their programmes and
listening to the exciting noise of the orchestra tuning up, they began
to look pleased and happy once more.

Then the curtain went up and the children forgot all their troubles at
once.  It was a gorgeous show, with lots of music and dancing, but not
too much of either to get in the way of the most gloriously comic funny
man they had ever seen.  They rolled about in their seats in laughter
and at the end of the first act they were contented, excited--and hot.

"Mummy," said Philip, standing up and twisting round in his place,
"there are ices.  Shall I see if I can get some?"

"Not for me, thank you," said Mrs. Jelf, fanning herself vigorously
with her programme.  "But you and Mary can have some if you like."

There were attendants handing ices on trays round the seats, but it was
a slow business, and it certainly didn't look as though there would be
enough trays to go round.  So the children made their way to the back
of the theatre from where the ices seemed to be coming, to see if they
would have better luck there.  At first they thought they were going to
be disappointed.  The ices were certainly there, but there were so many
people clamouring for them that it was impossible to get served.  They
were hanging rather helplessly round the outskirts of the crowd when
they heard a voice behind them that sounded familiar.

"Hullo, you two!" it said.  "Are you looking for ices?"

They turned round, and saw a short, pleasant-faced man in a dark suit
smiling at them.  For a moment or two they did not recognize him, and
then memory came back with a rush.

"Djinn, darling!" cried Mary, running across to where he was standing.
"It's you!"

"Sh!" said the Djinn quickly.  "That is not my name here.  Did you say
ices?"

"Yes, _please_!" said Mary.

The Djinn, without moving, just lifted his hand and snapped his
fingers.  Immediately a very pretty attendant pushed her way through
the crowd, carrying a tray with two gigantic ices.  It was like magic,
the children afterwards agreed, and certainly the most satisfying piece
of magic they had yet seen.

"Well," said the Djinn, when the ices had disappeared, "and how have
things been going since we last met?"

His question brought them back from the enchanted world of the theatre
to the troubles and worries that they had left outside.

"Rottenly," said Philip.  "Everything's turned out just as badly as it
possibly could."

The Djinn looked grave.

"I'm sorry about that," he said.  "Tell me."

And then the children realized, with a delicious feeling of relief,
that they had found the one person in the world to whom they could
explain exactly what had happened without being laughed at or
disbelieved.  They poured out the whole history of the last week and
the Djinn listened to them with serious attention.  He did not
interrupt or ask any questions, but when they told him of how Sir
Sigismund had been wished into the bottle, he threw back his head and
laughed out loud.

"Poor old Siggy!" he said.  "So that's where he's been all this time!
How sick he will be, cooped up in there, thinking of all the chances
he's missing of making money!"

His cheerfulness encouraged the children greatly, but they noticed that
when they went on to describe the dark-skinned stallkeeper, he frowned
and looked very grave again.  When they had finished, he said, "Well,
I'm truly sorry things have turned out so badly.  Wishes are tricky
things, you know, and you can never be quite sure how they will work.
Still, I don't think the outlook is quite so bad as you imagine.  In
fact, there's no reason why everything shouldn't come right in the end."

Just then the bell began to ring for the audience to go back to their
seats.

"Come and have another chat at the next interval," said the Djinn.  "I
may be able to tell you a little more when I've thought this over."

The second act was quite as good as the first.  Indeed, the children
thought it was even better, though this may have been only because
meeting the Djinn had put them in such a much happier frame of mind.
He seemed to take everything in such a sensible, matter-of-fact way
that though he had not promised that he could do anything to help them,
they both felt that the situation could not be nearly so desperate as
it had seemed during the last three days.  It occurred to Philip, while
his attention wandered from the stage during a rather long song about
love (in which he was not much interested), that by rights they ought
to be very cross with the Djinn, as all the trouble was really due to
the tiresome wishes he had given them.  But, somehow, it was quite
impossible to feel cross with him.  Not after those ices, anyhow.

When the curtain went down at the end of the second act, Philip and
Mary left their seats at once and went to the back.  They found the
Djinn in the same place, and this time he whistled up two glasses of
lemonade before they had even had time to think of it.  Then he said:

"There's one very important thing about this business which you don't
seem to have realized.  It's just four days since the bottle was
stolen, and Sir Sigismund is still inside it."

Philip choked over his lemonade.  This was a new idea.

"Is he?" he asked.  "Are you sure?"

"Obviously.  Otherwise he would have reappeared by now, and be back at
his office, hard at work making more money."

"But," said Mary, "we were certain that the man would let him out at
once, so as to earn a wish from him."

"That's what you'd expect him to do," agreed the Djinn.  "And there can
only be one reason why he hasn't done it--and that's because he can't.'"

"Why not?" both children asked at once.

The Djinn smiled and turned to Philip.

"When you corked Siggy up," he asked, "did you say anything, by any
chance?"

Philip thought for a moment.

"Yes," he said finally.  "I remember now.  There wasn't any seal or
anything to keep the cork in place, like there was when we found it the
first time, so I just jammed it in as hard as I could, and while I was
doing it I did say, 'Don't you come out till I tell you to'.  It didn't
mean anything in particular, it was just for luck."

"It was certainly very lucky for you that you did say it, whether it
meant anything or not," the Djinn observed.  "You see, being a magic
cork--naturally it has to be--it pays attention to what is said to it,
and it would take a very competent magician indeed to shift it now
without your permission."

"Then what does he want to keep the bottle for if he can't open it?"
asked Philip.

The Djinn frowned and shook his head.

"Unfortunately," he said, "there's quite a lot you can do with a Djinn
in a bottle, even if you can't get him out.  That is, if you know a few
simple spells, and are an evilly-disposed person.  Now I'm inclined to
think that this stall-keeper of yours is a very evilly-disposed person
indeed.  In fact, I shouldn't be surprised if he belonged to the
Aladdin family.  You may have heard of it."

"But of course I've heard of Aladdin!" said Mary.  "He wasn't at all an
evil person.  He was very nice."

The Djinn looked very severe.

"Nice?" he said.  "Because he married a princess and lived in a palace
happily ever after?  Is that what they teach you in your history-books?
Let me tell you, Aladdin was one of the greatest tyrants and
slave-drivers we Djinns have ever known.  Just think of his career!
Nothing but rubbing his wretched lamp day in and day out, and sending
his poor Djinn here, there and everywhere on the most impossible
errands with never a word of thanks!  It was a scandal.  Of course
things are different now.  We Afreets have got decent conditions of
labour with proper working hours and paid holidays, but there are still
plenty of bad employers left, and believe me, the Aladdins are the
worst of them!"

The Djinn had got quite excited in his attack on Aladdin, and seemed
for the moment to have forgotten all about Sir Sigismund, until Mary
reminded him by saying, "You don't think he'll _hurt_ Sir Sigismund, do
you?"

"No," replied the Djinn, calming down at once.  "He won't be able to
hurt him physically, because you can't hurt a ball of smoke, especially
when it's protected by a burglar-proof bottle.  But I expect he'll be
hurting his feelings pretty badly, making him do all kinds of low jobs
for him, like conjuring and fortune-telling, which must be most
wounding to a Djinn who's a millionaire and a B.A. at that."

"Is there anything you can do to help?" asked Philip hopefully.

The Djinn shook his head.

"No," he said.  "We're not allowed to interfere with the working out of
wishes.  That's one of the strictest regulations.  But don't worry.
Everything will sort itself out in time, and perhaps it will not be
such a long time as you think."

That was all he could tell them, for by now the third and last act was
due to begin and the children only just got back to their seats in
time, after the lights had been turned down and trampling on several
people's toes in the process.

On the whole, they enjoyed the third act more than either of the
others.  The funny man was more amusing than ever, and, best of all, he
sang the whole of the words and music of "If you'll be my honey, I'll
be your bread and butter man."  Philip was determined to learn it by
heart so that he could teach Curly next time they met, and he hummed it
all the way down in the train.  But, like Curly, he always forgot how
it went after the first few bars.  It was that sort of tune.


When they reached home, their father was already back from the City.
They found him reading the evening paper with a gloomy expression.  He
hardly paid any attention when the children tried to tell him about the
theatre, and he only came out from behind his newspaper when Mrs. Jelf,
going through the letters, exclaimed, "Here's an invitation from
Mother!"

"What's the Unpredictable up to now?" he asked, quite forgetting that
Philip and Mary were not supposed to know that that was her nickname.

Mrs. Jelf pursed her lips and frowned at his lapse, and then said, "She
wants us all to come over to tea at Bolster Place to-morrow."

"Come over to tea?  What nonsense!  She hasn't even moved in yet," said
Mr. Jelf.

"The letter says that she is moving her furniture to-day," Mrs. Jelf
explained.  "It's written on a packing-case, apparently, and to judge
from the hand-writing I should say it had been written in a furniture
van, too."

"Surely the place won't be fit for a tea-party by tomorrow," said Mr.
Jelf.  "What's the hurry?"

"I was just coming to that," Mrs. Jelf went on patiently.  "It's the
Little Bolster and Featherbed Women's Institute annual fte----"

"What the deuce!" interrupted Mr. Jelf, who had quite forgotten his
paper by now.

"Mother had quite forgotten that she had offered to lend them the
garden for it, but apparently it has all been arranged for some time
and she can't get out of it now.  There's to be a Punch and Judy show
and a fortune-teller and a houp-la----"

"--and a baby-show and morris dancing and an address from the vicar,"
suggested Mr. Jelf.

"She doesn't mention them, but I should think it's quite likely.
Anyhow, the point is, we are all to go, and when we have had enough of
it, we are to come in to tea and be shown all over the house.  You
would like to go, wouldn't you, children?"

"Rather!" said Philip.  It sounded quite an amusing way to spend the
last day of the holidays.

"And I'm sure you'd like to see the house, George," said Mrs. Jelf to
her husband.  "You can take half a day off from the office.  You said
yourself only the other day that there was nothing to do there."

But Mr. Jelf had retired behind his newspaper again.

"I can't possibly do it," he said.

"But why not?  It would do you good to take your mind off business for
an afternoon."

"I've got an appointment in the afternoon at four o'clock."

Something in his voice made Mrs. Jelf look up.

"George!" she said sharply.  "Who is your appointment with?"

"As a matter of fact," Mr. Jelf mumbled unwillingly from behind the
paper, "I'm going to see MacSwindle."

"MacSwindle!  That horrid man who cheated you so dreadfully when you
invented the collapsible butter-dish?  You can't really be meaning to
go and ask him for money again?"

Both parents had by now quite forgotten that the children were in the
room.  Philip and Mary listened with all their ears, hoping they would
find out what it was all about before they were noticed and sent off to
bed.

"Yes, I am going to borrow from MacSwindle!" declared Mr. Jelf,
throwing the newspaper on the floor and stamping on it.  "Of course I
know the man will rob me right and left, but where else am I to go for
money to float the new invention now that this Kaufman-Fortescue fellow
has vanished?  And if I don't get the invention going, there'll be no
money to pay Mrs. Marrable's wages or the children's school fees or
anything else!  I tell you, I'm in a desperate situation--desperate!"

It was at that point that Mrs. Jelf looked round and said quietly,
"Darlings, I think it's time you went upstairs to bed."

Philip and Mary went at once, feeling rather subdued and frightened by
what they had heard.  Philip, indeed, looked so depressed that Mary,
when she kissed him good night, felt that she must try to cheer him up.

"I'm certain it'll turn out all right," she said.  "The Djinn said so,
and I'm sure we can trust him."

"Huh!" said Philip.  "You only say that because he gave you an ice."

Which was really grossly unfair of him, for he had had an ice, too, and
enjoyed it quite as much as she had.




CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE FTE

Mrs. Jelf and the children got to Bolster Place about three o'clock the
next afternoon.  They found Mrs. Thwaites sitting on her shooting-stick
in the middle of the lawn, talking to the vicar of Featherbed.

"So here you are!" she said.  "I'm glad you brought the children.
They'll find plenty to amuse them, I think.  I daren't leave the lawn
myself, I'm keeping guard over the sundial.  The boys will try to use
it for leap-frog.  They've nearly had it down twice already."

There were indeed a lot of children in the garden, and some of them
were quite rowdy enough to justify Mrs. Thwaites's apprehension.  But
most of them were gathered round the Punch and Judy show, which had
just started in another corner of the garden, or the houp-la stall near
by.  Their mothers and elder sisters and aunts--the Women's Institute
members whose outing it really was--were more interested in walking
round the garden, looking at Mrs. Worsley-Worsley's flower-beds (which
were going to be much brighter next year, now they were Mrs.
Thwaites's) or criticizing one another's work, displayed on a stall of
Women's Institute handicraft.  Some of them made their way by twos and
threes to the far end of the lawn, where there was a little canvas
enclosure, with a notice outside reading "Madame Anna La Dean, Palmist
and Crystal Gazer."  Altogether, the garden seemed alive with people
wherever one looked, while from the house came noises of bumping and
banging which showed that furniture shifting and curtain hanging was
still going on there.

Philip and Mary tried their luck at the houp-la, without very much
success, and then listened to the Punch and Judy show for a time.  But
for some reason they did not stay very long there either.  It is always
like that on the last day of the holidays.  There are so many things
you would like to do and so little time to do them in, that in the end
you are apt to fidget the time away and your last chance of doing
anything is gone before you know where you are.  But on this occasion
it was even worse than usual.  They both felt that they ought to be
doing something, only they couldn't tell what.  It made them feel
restless and unhappy.  Philip found that his head was beginning to ache
a little.  It was a very warm afternoon, and when he looked up to the
sky he could see some dark clouds beginning to form just over the
horizon.  Perhaps there was thunder about, he thought.  But his feeling
of uneasiness was not wholly accounted for by that.

It was Mary who put into words what was at the back of both their minds.

"Philip," she said, as they drifted away from the Punch and Judy, "I
can't help thinking about poor Sir Sigismund.  If you're the only
person who can let him out of the bottle, then perhaps he'll have to
stay a prisoner for years and years."

"For ever, perhaps," said Philip gloomily.  "I may never find the
bottle.  Do you think the spell will be broken when I die?"

"But the Djinn did say that things would turn out all right in the
end," said Mary.

"Oh, the Djinn said----" retorted Philip, rather scornfully.  "Anyhow,
what does 'coming right in the end' mean?  In a hundred years or so, I
shouldn't wonder.  These people probably don't count time the same as
we do.  What may be quite soon to him may be too late for us and much
too late to help Daddy.  I don't suppose he knows this is the last day
of the holidays."

At this moment their grandmother came up to them.

"How are you getting on?" she said.  "I've left Mr. Chaffers on
sentry-go at the sun-dial, so I'm free to move about a bit.  He's been
helping me to lay carpets all day.  Do you know the Turkey carpet is
just too long for the hall, after all?  There's a horrid wrinkle in one
end.  So provoking!  Mr. Chaffers is going to see what he can do about
it."

The children were not very much interested in the Turkey carpet, though
they were too polite to say so.  What was really important was that Mr.
Chaffers had evidently not said anything about their part in his
accident with Catchpole's motor-car, and they were grateful to him for
that.

"What would you like to do?" Mrs. Thwaites went on, evidently noticing
that the children looked rather bored and worried.  "Your mother's over
there, if you want to talk to her.  Oh, no, better not.  She's with
Mrs. Foliot-Foljambe, that very stout lady in the feathered hat.  I
don't recommend her.  I tell you what, though--why not go and have your
fortunes told by Madame la Dean?  I hear she's wonderful.  She charges
a shilling each.  Here's the money," and she fished a florin out of her
bag.

"Thanks awfully, Granny, we will," said Philip, though both he and Mary
could have thought of better things to do with the money than having
their fortunes told.  Still, it was something to do, and they walked
across the lawn to Madame la Dean's little canvas cubicle.

As they approached it, two Women's Institute members were just coming
away.  One of them they recognized as the stout woman on the Eiderdown
bus.  She looked flushed and angry.

"The things that woman told me!" she was saying.  "I never heard such
impertinence in all my born days.  It ought to be put down, that kind
of thing, it ought indeed!  And then to take money for insulting you to
your face!"

"Well, Emma," said her friend, who seemed rather amused, "I'm sure all
the things she told me were true enough.  It was wonderful what she
could see in that crystal of hers, I thought."

"True!" replied the bus woman.  "Why, that's just what I'm complaining
of!  Who wants to hear the truth about themselves, I'd like to know?"

They moved away, still arguing.  Just as the children approached the
cubicle, Madame la Dean stuck her head out and said in a guttural
voice, "Any more?  I can't wait here all day!"

She was an odd-looking creature, with bright red hair and a face so
covered with powder that it was impossible to tell what it was like
underneath.  She wore a pair of rather dirty white gloves, and what
could be seen of the rest of her was covered in a flowing dress of
oriental stuff.

"Yes, please!" said Mary.  "We want our fortunes told."

"One at a time!" retorted Madame la Dean.  She pointed a gloved finger
at Philip.  "You!  I will take you first.  And you!" pointing at Mary,
"you will wait outside."

So to her disappointment Mary had to hang about outside the enclosure
while Philip's fortune was being told.  But to her pleasure and
surprise, Mr. Chaffers came up at that moment, looking much better,
though he still had to walk with a stick.

"I thought you were keeping guard on the sun-dial," she said.  "Granny
said the boys were trying to play leap-frog on it."

"Ah!" said Mr. Chaffers with a wink.  "The vicar, he's giving an
address from the lawn just by the sun-dial.  I reckon that'll keep the
boys away better than I could.  Look," he went on.  "I've hunted
everywhere about the place for another bottle like that one you lost,
but there wasn't one.  But I have found a little something under the
floor boards in the kitchen here, which you'd better have for luck.
Here it is."

And he handed Mary a shilling with the head of George III on it and the
date, 1792.  Mr. Chaffers had cleaned it and polished it until now it
was as bright and shining as it had been on the day when someone
dropped it, very likely when Bolster Place was being built.

"Oh, thank you, dear Mr. Chaffers!" said Mary.  "It is sweet of you,
and I'm sure it'll bring me luck.  Good gracious!" she added,
"whatever's happening?"


Philip meanwhile had entered the fortune-teller's cubicle.  Inside it
was rather dark and stuffy, and there was a strong smell of hot canvas
and trodden grass.  Madame la Dean sat behind a small table and there
was another chair in front of it for the visitor.  At one side of the
table was a little stand, draped down to the ground with muslin, and on
this was the crystal in which she gazed to see visions of the future.
It did not look like a crystal at all, for it was nearly black in
colour, but from time to time it gave out a greenish glow.  It was
nearly round in shape, except for the top, which was flat.  The bottom
part was hidden by the drapery that covered the stand.

Philip handed over his florin and Madame la Dean, after fumbling about
in her draperies for some time, produced a shilling change.  She was
muttering something under her breath as she did so, and all of a sudden
it came over Philip that he did not like Madame la Dean at all.  There
was something very nasty about her.  He began to wish he had not come,
but it was too late to do anything about it now, and in any case he was
interested to know what his fortune would be.  Perhaps she could tell
him whether he would find Sir Sigismund, he thought.

"Put your handss on the table, palm upwardss, pleasse," said Madame la
Dean.

Philip obeyed, and as he did so he had the odd feeling that he had
heard something like those words before.  Madame la Dean did not
immediately look at his hands.  Instead, her eyes travelled up wards
until they met Philip's.  He noticed that they were rather strange,
yellow eyes.

"What iss that tie-pin you are wearing?" she asked.  "You must take it
off.  I cannot tell your fortune while you wear that pin."

Philip put his hand up to his tie, where was the pin which he had
picked up the day after the visit to Eiderdown.  He took it out, and as
he did so Madame la Dean leaned across the table and snatched it from
him so quickly that it had gone before he knew what had happened.

"That iss better!" she said with a horrible grin.  Then something
seemed to snap inside Philip's head.  The strange, uneasy feeling which
he had had all the afternoon and particularly since he had been inside
the little tent, suddenly vanished and he knew exactly what had
happened.

"You're not Madame la Dean at all!" he exclaimed, jumping up from his
chair, "I know who you are!  You're----"

The fortune-teller had got up, too, and beneath her powder her face
looked very frightened.  In the heat the powder had begun to run, and
Philip could see streaks of brown skin on her cheeks and neck.

"Pleasse!" she gasped.  "Pleasse!"

Philip was leaning across the table, trying to get at the tie-pin,
which she was holding in her gloved hands.  She tried to avoid him in
the confined space of the tent.  Between them the table suddenly gave a
lurch to one side, and the stand with the crystal on it was upset.
With a cry, Madame la Dean pounced on the crystal and caught it as it
fell.  Then Philip saw that it was not a ball at all, but a round
object with a long neck which must have gone through a hole in the top
of the stand and been concealed by the drapery that covered it.  At the
sight of it, he forgot all about his tie-pin and everything else.

"Give me my bottle!" shouted Philip and made a grab at the
fortune-teller.  Some of her flowing skirt tore in his hand as she
struggled to get free.  The next moment he received a fierce blow in
the face, and then the whole tent collapsed on them.

Philip struggled under a mass of canvas and clothing.  At times he did
not know whether he had hold of the sides of the tent or the
fortune-teller's dress.  But at last he found himself in the open air
again.  The first thing he saw was Madame la Dean, just extricated from
the ruins of the tent, her red wig askew and showing short black hair
beneath, starting to run across the lawn, the precious bottle under her
arm.  The next thing he saw was Mary and Mr. Chaffers, standing and
staring as though they could not believe their eyes.

"Stop him!" gasped Philip.  "Mary, it's Aladdin!  The bottle!"

"A-a-ah!" roared Mr. Chaffers, suddenly springing to life.  With
astonishing agility he hurled himself at the flying form of the
fortune-teller.  The torn dress was floating behind and this he was
just able to seize as the pretended Madame la Dean was making off.  The
material parted with a loud ripping sound, disclosing a pair of
corduroy trousers beneath.  But Mr. Chaffers's tug at the dress had
been so vigorous that it threw the wearer off his balance and he came
to the ground with a heavy fall, letting the bottle slip from his
hands.  Rolling over and over, Aladdin was up again almost at once.
Mr. Chaffers tried to grab his leg, but received a kick in the stomach
that winded him completely.  The next moment, Aladdin had sprinted
across the lawn, leaped the hedge and was lost to sight.

"Ah!" growled Mr. Chaffers, when he could recover his breath.  "The
villain's got away!"

But Mary was dancing up and down in delight.  She had seen the bottle
fall and pounced upon it like a hawk.

"It doesn't matter, Mr. Chaffers," she cried.  "Nothing matters now!
We've got Sir Sigismund again, safe and sound!"




CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SIR SIGISMUND UNBOTTLED

The whole garden was in an uproar.  From every side women and children
came running, all talking at once and at the tops of their voices.  The
Punch and Judy show was deserted in a moment, and the vicar of
Featherbed, in the middle of his address, found himself talking to
nothing but a border of zinnias and early Michaelmas daisies.  One
group clustered round what was left of Madame la Dean's tent, and
another surrounded poor Mr. Chaffers as he lay on the ground, all
asking him questions which he was far too breathless to answer.
Noisiest of the lot was the fat woman from the bus, who waved her arms
in the direction in which Aladdin had escaped, and repeated over and
over to her friend, "There!  What did I tell you!"--though she had
certainly not told her anything like what had actually happened.

Philip tugged Mary by the arm.  "Let's get out of this, quick!" he said.

They slipped out of the crowd and dodged behind the kitchen garden wall.

"Where are we going?" asked Mary.

"Into the house," said Philip.  "That's the only safe place.  Come on!"

Following the line of the wall, they soon found themselves at the back
door of the house.  It was open, and they ran inside unobserved.  After
the noise and heat of the garden, the house was quiet and cool.  What
sounds there were came from upstairs, where Mr. Chaffers's men were
putting the finishing touches to the decorations.  Downstairs,
everything looked peaceful and orderly, as though Mrs. Thwaites had
been living there for months, instead of having only just moved in.  It
was difficult to realize that this was the house that they had seen all
dusty and deserted a week ago.  They sneaked past the door of the
kitchen, where they could hear their grandmother's cook moving about,
and made their way to the dining-room.

"This will do," said Philip.  "Give me the bottle, Mary."

Mary handed him the bottle.  Philip put it on the floor and took hold
of the cork.

"Just a minute, Philip," said Mary.  "I've thought of something."

"What is it?" her brother asked, tugging at the top of the cork.  "We
can't waste time.  Someone may come in any minute."

"It's this," said Mary.  "Won't Sir Sigismund be frightfully cross when
we let him out?"

"I expect he will be, after all that's happened to him since we put him
in the bottle."

"Well, we've never settled--how are we going to make him uncross, so
that he'll lend Daddy the money?"

"I don't care whether he's cross or uncross," Philip replied.  "I know
just what to do.  Watch!"

He gave another pull at the cork, but still nothing happened.  They
could hear the voices of people and footsteps on the gravel path
outside the window.

"What's happened?" asked Mary.

"I can't get it out," gasped Philip.  And then, "Oh, how silly of me!
I forgot!  Please, cork, will you come out?"

And immediately the cork obediently loosened itself and came away in
his hand quite easily.

Once more Mary watched the thick column of smoke pouring from the neck
of the bottle in great puffs.  She noticed that Sir Sigismund's smoke
was not quite the same as that of their original Djinn.  It had a
purplish tinge and was a good deal more agitated; but whether this was
due to the shaking the bottle had received or to Sir Sigismund's bad
temper, she could not say.  Then, to her surprise, the smoke stopped
ascending, although only a small cloud had formed about five and a half
feet from the ground.  Looking down, she saw that Philip, kneeling on
the floor, had put the cork back again in the bottle.

"Whatever are you doing?" she asked.

"Sh!" said Philip in a whisper.  "Wait!"

Presently the cloud grew smaller and solider.  Two rather large, fleshy
ears formed themselves on either edge.  Next a pair of horn-rimmed
spectacles materialized, joining the ears, a prominent nose pushed out
under the arch of the spectacles, and then all of a sudden there was
Sir Sigismund's head suspended in space over the bottle, looking
considerably astonished and frowning dreadfully.

"Hi, you!  Boy!" said the head.  "Let me out of this confounded bottle,
will you?"

"Just a second, Sir Sigismund," said Philip, looking up, but keeping
his hand carefully on the cork.  "If I let you out, will you do us a
favour?"

The face went nearly as purple as the smoke had been a moment or two
before.

"Do you a favour?" it said.  "Do you know who I am?"

"Yes, Sir Sigismund.  I know who you are, and I want you to lend Daddy
ten thousand pounds."

"Ten thousand----!"  The head bounced up towards the ceiling about two
feet and then came down again, looking rather like a toy balloon on the
end of a string.  "Good heavens, this is blackmail!"

"No, it's not," said Philip indignantly.  "It's simply your fault for
losing your temper with Daddy because of a pure accident which he
couldn't help because I did it, anyway, and it's a jolly good invention
and you'll get your money back in no time.  Daddy said so."

Sir Sigismund's face looked rather less angry, but very bewildered.

"Accident?  Invention?" said the head.  "Who are you, and what are you
talking about?"

"My name's Philip Jelf."

"Oh...!  So you're the boy who poured hot coffee on my head, are you?"

"It wasn't coffee, it was cocoa.  And anyhow it was an accident that
might have happened to anyone."

"And you ought to be jolly grateful to us for getting you away from
Aladdin," put in Mary.  "Unless, you like being made to do conjuring
tricks and tell people's fortunes."

The head fairly quivered at the mention of Aladdin.

"No, no, my dear children," it said, in an almost humble voice.  "I
emphatically do not like anything of the kind.  Please let me out at
once, and in return you shall have a magic wish.  Honest Afreet, you
shall."

"I'm not fearfully keen on wishes," said Philip.  "No more is Mary,
after what we've had of them.  We'd much rather you lent Daddy ten
thousand pounds."

"Ten thousand pounds is a lot of money," said the head doubtfully.  "I
shall have to consider----"

"Well you'd better be quick about it," said Philip.  "You don't want
anyone to come in here and find you looking like this."

At that moment, in fact, someone did come in.  It was Mrs. Thwaites's
parlour-maid with a tray of tea things.  She stopped in the doorway and
stared, with her mouth wide open in astonishment.

"Go away, woman!" roared Sir Sigismund's voice from mid-air.  "Can't
you see I'm busy?"

With a wild shriek the parlour-maid dropped the tray and fled from the
room.  They could hear her footsteps clattering down the passage to the
back of the house.

"There you are!" said Philip, when all was quiet again.  "Next time it
may be Granny, and she'll make much more fuss."

"Oh, very well, very well!" said the head in a resigned voice.  "I dare
say I shall lose my money, and I still maintain it's blackmail, but I
suppose I must put up with it.  Now will you let me out?"

Philip released the cork, and bits of Sir Sigismund began to form
beneath the head.

"Where do you keep your money?" Philip asked, while the smoke poured
upwards to join the rest.

"In the bank, of course," answered Sir Sigismund testily.  "But my
cheque book is in my coat pocket, if that's what you're thinking of."

"Then I expect that's enough," said Philip, clapping in the cork again.
"You can have the rest of you when you've written out the cheque."

And sure enough, Sir Sigismund was now complete down to his waist.  The
coat and waistcoat of the gay suit were there, complete with the
carnation in his button-hole.  Only the trousers were missing.

"I can't sign a cheque in mid-air, can I?" complained Sir Sigismund
peevishly.  "Give me something to write on."

"The table will do," said Philip.  He pushed the bottle across the
floor, and Sir Sigismund's upper half followed it.  It reminded Mary of
a ship she had seen during the war with a barrage balloon attached to
its deck.  When he got to the table, Philip squatted down underneath
it, and Sir Sigismund, holding on to the edge with one hand to keep
himself steady, fished out his cheque book with the other.

"Never felt so ridiculous in all my life," he grumbled, as he felt for
his fountain pen.  "What are your father's initials?"

"A.G." said Philip, from under the table.

"He's Adolphus George," Mary explained.  "But Mummy always calls him
George."

"And the date?  I've lost all count of time in that ghastly bottle."

"The fifteenth of September."

"Thanks."

Sir Sigismund began to write, but before he had filled up the cheque, a
high-pitched feminine voice was heard from the hall outside.

"It's quite all right, dear Mrs. Thwaites," it said.  "I know you are
busy just now.  I'll just take a little stroll round by myself."

Then the door opened, and a large lady in a feathered hat came into the
room.  From the look of her it could be seen that she would give much
more trouble than the parlour-maid.

"Sir Sigismund!" she said at once.  "Good gracious me!  We have been so
anxious about you!  Where ever have you been?  And what----?"

It was an awkward moment, but Sir Sigismund was more than equal to the
occasion.  He simply looked up from his writing and said quite calmly:

"Ah, Mrs. Foliot-Foljambe!  Please excuse my getting up, but, as you
see, I am rather busy at this moment.  Will you please give my kind
regards to your husband and tell him how sorry I was to have been
called away so abruptly the other day?  And--forgive me--but would you
mind closing the door behind you?  I am rather susceptible to draughts.
Good day!"

Mrs. Foliot-Foljambe was so overcome by Sir Sigismund's masterly
demeanour that she withdrew at once, murmuring apologies and looking
rather puzzled.  She would have been still more puzzled if it had
occurred to her to look under the table and had seen Philip crouching
on the floor where Sir Sigismund's legs should have been, but luckily
she never thought of doing so.

Then Sir Sigismund completed the cheque, and immediately Philip, by
taking the cork out of the bottle for the last time, completed Sir
Sigismund.  No sooner were his legs on again than he got up from the
table, stretched himself all over, threw back his head and laughed--and
laughed--and laughed.

The children were quite astonished at this sudden change in his
behaviour.  For a moment they wondered whether his confinement in the
bottle and his undignified adventures while inside it had affected his
mind.  But presently Sir Sigismund's laughter died down, his flabby
form stopped shaking and it was apparent that he was quite normal and
very pleased with himself.

"Excuse me, my dear children," he said at last, wiping his eyes with a
large bandana handkerchief.  "But this is really too funny for words.
And I've only just realized how very much obliged to you I am!"

Philip and Mary looked at each other in surprise.  This was the last
thing they had expected him to say.

"How sick it will make all the others!" chortled Sir Sigismund.
"They'll be as jealous as cats!  Why, I might have waited another
hundred years for a chance like this!"

"A chance like what?" Mary asked.  But Philip suddenly saw what he was
driving at.

"Do you mean a chance to pass your test again?" he asked.

Sir Sigismund nodded, a complacent smile on his plump face.

"Oh, I see," said Mary.  "You're a sort of double B.A. now."

"Double B.A. indeed!" said Sir Sigismund scornfully.  "I'd have you
know, young lady, that I am now entitled to put D.D. after my name, and
that's about the highest degree anyone can get."

"What's a D.D.?" asked Philip.

"Doubly Decanted, of course.  There's not one Afreet in a thousand
who's graduated to that rank.  And to think that I owe it all to
you--it's worth ten thousand any day of the week!  Here's your cheque,
young man," he went on, handing the cheque to Philip.  "Remember me to
your father.  Oh, and by the way, I'll have that bottle, please."

"But the Djinn--our Djinn--said we could keep it," said Mary.

"I dare say he did, but I'm not going to have D.D.'s made too cheap.
I'll take it with me.  It ought to go back for salvage, anyway."

Sir Sigismund picked up the bottle, folded it up exactly as if it was a
piece of paper, and put it in the pocket where he kept his cheque book.
Then, humming a cheerful tune, he strode out of the dining-room into
the hall, the children following.  They felt as cheerful as he did, and
now that the money was safe they did not think that the bottle was
worth worrying about.

They were half-way to the front door when the grandfather clock in the
corner struck the hour.  Philip stopped in his tracks.

"Oh Lord, Mary!" he cried in a voice full of anxiety.  "It's four
o'clock.  I'd quite forgotten--we're too late, after all!"

"What's the matter?" asked Sir Sigismund, stopping in his turn.  "Too
late for what?"

"Too late to give Daddy the money.  He's gone to borrow it from someone
else, and he's there now."

"If he doesn't want my cheque, I might as well have it back," said Sir
Sigismund quickly, holding out his hand.  "Who was he going to borrow
it from?"

"I forget the name," said Philip.  "I know Daddy was going to see him
at four o'clock."

"It was Mac somebody," said Mary.

"Not MacSwindle, by any chance?"

"Yes, that was it," both children said together.

"MacSwindle, eh?" said Sir Sigismund, slowly.  He had a very
wide-awake, sharp look on his face.  "If MacSwindle's in this, it means
that there's money in this contraption your father's invented, and
Master MacSwindle's going to get hold of most of it.  He's a nasty
piece of work, if ever there was one.  I'd rather like to put a spoke
in his wheel, if I could, quite apart from anything else."

"It's all very well to say that," said Mary desperately, "but what can
we do now?  He's there and we're here, and it's past four o'clock
already."

It was maddening, thought Philip, to be beaten in this way at the last
minute, just when everything seemed to be going so well.  He stamped
impatiently on the floor.  His foot caught in the place where the
Turkey carpet was folded because it was too long for the hall, and that
reminded him of something.

"Granny wished this carpet was a flying one the other day," he said.
"If only it was, we could do something!"

"Well," said Sir Sigismund, with a genial smile, "you're entitled to a
wish, aren't you?  Why shouldn't it be?"

And of course it was.




CHAPTER FIFTEEN

HOW IT ALL ENDED

The carpet rose about two feet in the air and remained motionless,
flapping its fringes slowly.

"Where to, guv'nor?" it asked in a hoarse voice.

"MacSwindle's office, 5, Crooks' Corner, Bucket Street, E.C.2," said
Sir Sigismund.  "And look sharp, we're in a hurry."

"O.K.," said the carpet.  "Mind your 'eads!"  And it charged straight
at the front door, which luckily stood open.

They came out into the garden just as the thunderstorm, which had been
threatening all afternoon, broke in a downpour of rain.  The carpet
shot upwards through sheets of descending water, just above the heads
of Mrs. Thwaites and the vicar, who were leading a wild rush of people
stampeding into the house for shelter.  Luckily they were far too busy
trying to avoid the storm to see the carpet careering over them.  The
children and Sir Sigismund were soaked through in a moment, and the
wind was so strong that they had to lie flat to avoid being blown off.

"We'll 'ave to get above this," said the carpet, its husky voice almost
drowned in a roll of thunder.  "Up we go!"

Suddenly the children, looking down, saw the garden, with its crowd of
women and children all running in the same direction, getting smaller
and smaller.  In no time, they were almost lost to view in the rain.
Then a thick, black cloud enfolded the travellers.  They found
themselves in complete darkness.  An instant later, a vivid flash of
lightning streaked past, seeming to miss them by inches, followed
immediately by a deafening clap of thunder.

"That singed my whiskers!" announced the carpet, jovially, as the
thunder died away.  "Lumme, guv'nor, you ain't 'alf chosen a nice day
for an outing!  I'd sooner take a beating any day!"

All at once they were out of the cloud, with a bright blue sky above
them, and a glorious sun pouring down, making their wet clothes steam
with its heat.  It was a marvellous feeling.  Philip and Mary sat up on
the carpet and basked in the warmth.  It was like the very best kind of
sun bathing.  Below and on every side were great clouds, black and grey
and white, and ever and again between them were rifts through which
they could catch glimpses of the countryside wheeling slowly beneath
them, while the carpet, so it seemed, hung suspended in the clear sky,
its shadow reflected on the moving clouds.

Presently the clouds disappeared, and they saw that they were sailing
along over green fields and woods, roads, railways and houses.  Almost
at once the houses began to multiply beneath them, the fields
disappeared, and there, right ahead, was the golden cross of St. Paul's
Cathedral, glistening in the sunlight.  The carpet was now coming down
at a steep angle, and Philip and Mary held on tight for fear they
should slip off.

"You needn't pinch my pile," grumbled the carpet.  "I won't let you
go."  It was heading now for a tall office building standing near St.
Paul's, just on the edge of the bare space which the Germans left when
they tried to burn London down.

"Third floor!" said Sir Sigismund sharply, as the building loomed in
front of them like a cliff.

"O.K.!" muttered the carpet.  One of the windows on the third floor was
open.  Rolling up its sides to make itself narrower, it flew straight
for the window.  The children ducked frantically and shut their eyes as
they scraped narrowly between the sill and the sash.  Almost
immediately they felt that they were flying no longer.  There was a
hard floor beneath them and the carpet was stretched out flat and
lifeless.  They opened their eyes and stood up.  Looking round, they
found themselves in a large, bare room.  There were two desks in it,
covered with great leatherbound ledgers, and a smaller table with a
typewriter.  Behind each desk sat a spectacled clerk, one elderly and
one quite youthful, while behind the table was a gaily dressed young
woman, her fingers on the keys of the typewriter.  One and all sat up
and stared with all their might at the new arrivals, but none of them
uttered a word.  Quite obviously they literally could not believe their
eyes, and each of them thought that what he saw must be invisible to
the others.  The elder clerk opened his mouth to speak, changed his
mind, coughed, ran his finger between his collar and his neck, and then
got up and opened the window a little wider (which was just what the
children wanted).  The younger one shook his head, blinked, and pulling
a small bottle and a glass out of his desk, poured himself out a drink
with a shaking hand.  As for the typist, she put her hand to her head
for a moment and then produced a bottle of aspirin from her bag.  When
she had swallowed one she set to work to type at furious speed, without
once glancing again at the carpet with its three passengers right under
nose.

"Wait here," said Sir Sigismund quietly to the two children, as he
scrambled to his feet.  "I'm going to give MacSwindle the shock of his
wicked life."

From his pocket he produced the cheque which Philip had returned to
him, and flourishing this in his hand he walked across the room to a
door marked "PRIVATE".  He opened it without knocking and went straight
through.  Looking after him, Philip and Mary could see into a small
room, with a large desk in it, placed endways to the door.  On one side
of the desk was seated a lean, pale man with very small pig-like eyes
and a mouth that might have been drawn with a ruler, so hard and
straight and thin was it.  On the other side was their father, and the
desk between them was covered with papers.  Both men looked up in
astonishment as Sir Sigismund strode in.  Then the door closed behind
him, and the children were left standing on the carpet, surrounded by
the clerks, who were still busy pretending they were not there.

They had not long to wait.  In two or three minutes Sir Sigismund came
out again, rubbing his hands in glee.

"That's that!" he said.  "And one of the best bits of business I've
ever done in my life!  Your father's got nothing to worry about now,
and I've left MacSwindle with a nasty headache.  You'd better be off
now before your father sees you.  I must get back to my office."

"Shall I drop you there, sir?" said the carpet, suddenly coming to life.

"No thanks," said Sir Sigismund, stepping nimbly off it as it rose from
the floor.  "I'll take a taxi.  It'll look better.  Take these children
back to their grandmother's, will you?"

"O.K.," said the carpet, and began to glide slowly towards the window.

"Oh please, just a minute!" Mary called out.

"What is it?" asked Sir Sigismund, catching the carpet by its edge
before it could fly away.

"May I have a wish, please?"

"M'm, I'm not sure you're entitled to one by the regulations.  I
thought you'd had enough of wishes, anyway.  What do you want?"

"It's quite an easy wish, Sir Sigismund," said Mary.  "It's just, if it
was allowed, I should like to wish for a bicycle."

"A bicycle?  Good gracious me, if this invention of your father's is
half what I think it is, he'll be able to give you all the bicycles you
want, and motor-cars, too.  You don't want a wish for that."

"But it's not for me," Mary explained.  "It's for Mr. Chaffers.  If it
hadn't been for him, we'd never have got the bottle back, and I know he
does miss his bicycle dreadfully.  May I wish for that, please?"

Sir Sigismund nodded and smiled.  "I'll see to it," he said.

He let go of the carpet and an instant later they found themselves
soaring up above the roof-tops of the City.

The journey home was quick and uneventful.  Far too soon for the
children's enjoyment they were flying over the garden at Bolster Place,
now once more shining in the sunlight after the storm.  As they came
down towards the front door, Philip thought of something.

"I say," he said to the carpet, "would you mind doing something for us?"

"As if I 'adn't done nothing already," grumbled the carpet.  "What's
the great idea, cock?"

"Do you think you could possibly make yourself a bit shorter, so as to
fit the hall?" Philip asked.  "About six inches would do, I should
think.  I know it's been worrying Granny terribly."

"Suits me," said the carpet.  "I 'ate being rumpled up, anyway.  It's
un'ealthy.  And there's a worn patch in my middle I wouldn't mind
getting rid of at all.  'Ere goes!"

As it swooped through the door the children felt the carpet beneath
them shrug itself just below where they were sitting.  Then, with a
sigh of relief, it settled down in its old place in the hall and became
an ordinary Turkey carpet once more.  But this time it fitted the space
left for it as perfectly as though it had been made for that very
purpose.

As Philip and Mary stood up, Mrs. Thwaites came into the hall from the
drawing-room.

"So you've got here, children!" she said.  "Did you manage to find
somewhere to keep dry during that awful storm?  You're just in time for
tea.  It's been a bit delayed, Susan had an accident with the tray.
Most unlike her, but I suppose the thunder scared her.  Oh!" she
exclaimed suddenly, as she noticed the carpet.  "Mr. Chaffers, however
did you manage it?  Mr. Chaffers!  Where are you, Mr. Chaffers!"

Mr. Chaffers came down the stairs, looking rather puzzled.  He had a
hammer in his hand and several two inch wire nails in his mouth.

"Mr. Chaffers, you really are a magician," Mrs. Thwaites said to him.
"I noticed when I came in you had taken the carpet up to see what could
be done with it, and here it is again already, fitting exactly.  How
did you do it so quickly?"

Mr. Chaffers took the nails out of his mouth, scratched his head and
then decided to say "Ah!" in a most mysterious voice.  On the whole, it
was probably the wisest thing he could say in all the circumstances.
But he said "Ah!" again, much louder and with enormous satisfaction,
when two or three days later a superb new three-speed bicycle was
delivered at his house, with a label tied to it, saying, "With the
compliments of Sir Sigismund Kaufman-Fortescue, D.D., and of Master and
Miss Jelf."

Mr. Jelf was extremely talkative that evening.

"Do you know, dear," he said to his wife, after the children had gone
to bed, "when Sir Sigismund walked into MacSwindle's office, I felt as
though I was in a dream!  So much so, that I had a positive
hallucination."

"A what, George?"

"A--how shall I describe it?--a kind of vision.  I could see Sir
Sigismund, of course, but behind him I seemed to see, through a sort of
mist, the dear ones he had come to save from poverty."

"George, darling!  Do you really mean you had a vision of me?"

"Er--no," Mr. Jelf confessed.  "Not actually of you, dear.  I don't
know why it should be, but you weren't part of it.  But I did see the
children quite clearly, looking at me as I sat there."

"Well," said Mrs. Jelf in a rather disappointed tone, "visions or no
visions, I must finish checking their clothes for packing to-morrow.
I'm afraid it has been rather a dull holiday for them, poor things!"

"Yes," Mr. Jelf agreed.  "Very dull indeed!"






[End of The Magic Bottle, by Cyril Hare]
