"I don't know," mumbled the boy, interested in an éclair. "She cries a lot. Mother says she's in a decline."
"Oughtn't she to see a doctor?" I wondered.
"Mother thinks a doctor'd be no good. Besides, I don't 'spect she'd let one see Cecil, anyhow. I told you she won't allow any one in."
"Why does your mother give Cecil a room whose window looks over the moat, if it's so important she should hide?" I persisted.
"All the rooms in that wing where we live are like that," Bertie explained. "They've windows on the little court inside, and windows outside, on the moat. But the outside window in Cecil's room is nailed shut now, so she couldn't open it if she tried. And those little old panes set in lead are thick as thick! I don't believe you could smash one unless you had a hammer. Father says you couldn't. I mean, he says Cecil couldn't. And since the day Mother scolded Cecil for looking out, the curtain's nailed down. It doesn't matter, though. Plenty of light comes from the garden side."
"Where was Cecil before you went to live in the wing?" I asked. "Was she in the house?"
"Oh, she'd been in that wing for weeks before Father and I moved in," said the boy. "Mother slept there at night. And Cecil could look out as much as she liked, because there was no one about except us, and Krammie. Krammie doesn't count! She's the same as the family, because she's so old—she nursed Mother when Mother was a baby. Seems funny she could have been a baby, doesn't it? But Krammie loves her better than any one, except me. She never splits on me to them if I do anything. But now I've eaten all the cakes, so we'd better go and find Krammie. If we don't, she may go into the wing first. There'd be the devil to pay then!"
It seemed to me that there was the devil to pay already—a devil in woman's form—unless my imagination had made a fool of me. I shivered with disgust at the thought of those two witches—the middle-aged one and the hag. I hope I didn't take their wickedness for granted because they were both Germans, though we have got into that habit in the last five years, with all we've gone through, and with the villains who used to be Russian in novels now being German!
If I did hand over my prize to the elder witch, the boy was lost to me. I should never get a second chance to catch my fox with cake! And even were I sure that he wouldn't blab, or that Kramm wouldn't, the secret of our meeting was certain to leak out. In that case, the red baize door would never again open to my knock. So what was I to do?
"Come along," urged the boy. Having got all he could get out of me, he began to sulk. "I don't want to stay with you any more."