Then the Terror said in his gloomiest tone: “I can’t see what we can do.”
“Oh, I’m going to get him out of it somehow!” cried Erebus in a furious desperation.
With that she mounted her bicycle and rode swiftly up the drive.
The Terror mounted, started after her, and stopped at the end of fifty yards. It had occurred to him that, after all, he was the only poacher of the three, the only one in real danger. As he leaned on his machine, watching his vanishing sister, he ground his teeth. For all his natural serenity, inaction was in the highest degree repugnant to him.
Erebus reached Great Deeping Court but a few minutes after Wiggins and the keeper. She was about to ride on round the house, thinking that the keeper would, as befitted his station, enter it by the back door, when she saw Wiggins’ bicycle standing against one of the pillars of the great porch. In a natural elation at having captured a poacher, and eager to display his prize without delay, the keeper had gone straight into the great hall.
Erebus dismounted and stood considering for perhaps half a minute; then she moved Wiggins’ bicycle so that it was right to his hand if he came out, set her own bicycle against another of the pillars, but out of sight lest he should take it by mistake, walked up the steps, hammered the knocker firmly, and rang the bell. The moment the door opened she stepped quickly past the footman into the hall. The keeper sat on a chair facing her, and on a chair beside him sat Wiggins looking white and woebegone.
Erebus gazed at them with angry sparkling eyes, then she said sharply: “What are you doing with my little brother?”
She adopted Wiggins with this suddenness in order to strengthen her position.
The keeper opened his eyes in some surprise at her uncompromising tone, but he said triumphantly:
“I caught ’im poachin’—”