‘Oh, flame-cats,’ he said. ‘I did stop shocking you when you asked me. Do show a light just for a minute.’
Then the one little glimmer on the wall began to grow brighter, and he saw it was the eye of a flame-cat. Then another eye lit up, as if a gas-lighter in the street had turned it on, and after that the apricot-and-poppy-coloured tabby appeared. ‘Set to partners,’ it said, and disappeared again, like water running out of the hole at the bottom of a basin. But in that moment’s light, David had found the key and fitted it into the lock of the blue door.
‘There’s just time to take the key with me,’ he said, and pulled the door open. Before he had shut it after him, and locked it again, he heard a voice say ‘Fire,’ and there was a tremendous explosion.
He had fallen forward on his bed, and the pillow went with a soft thump on to the floor. But tight clenched in his hand was the golden key, and the door was shut and locked behind him.
David reaches home
David didn’t remember having taken off his sailor clothes and put on his pyjamas, but here he was in them now, and his sailor clothes were in a heap on the floor, and the light of the dawn was coming in through his windows. He felt tremendously sleepy, but before he turned round to get under his bed-clothes, he opened his hand to look at the golden key. But there was no key there: it was only the pin-partridge.
For the moment he was horribly disappointed, but almost instantly he cheered up again.
‘It doesn’t matter a bit!’ he said. ‘I know how to get through the door now. Oh, what an exciting night. I wonder——’