Still more slowly, still more thoughtfully, William descended to her room on the lower floor and saw the time. It was five minutes to six. Dr. Morlan might arrive then at any minute. William considered the situation from every angle. To depart now as unostentatiously as possible seemed to him a far, far better thing than to wait and face Dr. Morlan’s wrath. The hose pipe was damaged, the garden was flooded, Miss Polliter’s room was like a battlefield after a battle, strange infants and a pig were disporting themselves about the house, a destructive puppy had wreaked its will upon every cushion and curtain and chair within reach (it had found that it could pull down window curtains).
William very quietly slipped out of the front door and crept down the drive. The flood seemed to be concentrating itself upon the back of the house. The front was still more or less dry. William crept across the field to the stile that led to the main road. Here his progress was barred by a group of three who stood talking by the stile. There was a tall pompous-looking man with a beard, a small woman and an elderly man.
“Oh, yes, we’ve quite settled in now,” the tall, pompous-looking man was saying. “We’ve got a resident patient with us—a Miss Polliter who is a chronic nervous case. We are rather uneasy at having to leave her all to-day with only the cook and house-boy. Unfortunately our housemaid left us suddenly yesterday but we trust that things will have gone all right. An aunt of mine was reported to be seriously ill and we had to hurry to her to be in time but unfortunately—ahem—I mean fortunately—we found that she had taken a turn for the better so we returned as soon as we could.”
“Of course,” said the woman, “we’d have been back ever so much earlier if it hadn’t been for that affair at the cave.”
“Oh, yes,” said the doctor, “very tragic affair, very tragic indeed. Some poor boy ... there were a lot of people there trying to recover the body and they wanted to have a doctor in the unlikely case of the boy being alive when they got him out. I assured them that it was very unlikely that he would be alive and that I had to get back to my own patient ... and it would only be a matter of a few minutes to send for me.... The poor mother was distraught.”
“What had happened?” said the other man.
“Some rash child had crawled into an opening in the rock and had not come out. He must have been suffocated. His friends waited for over an hour before they notified the parents and I am afraid that it is too late now. They have repeatedly called to him but there is no response. As I told them, there are frequently poisonous gases in the fissures of the rock and the poor child must have succumbed to them. So far all attempts to recover the body have been unsuccessful. They have just sent for men with pickaxes.”
William’s heart was sinking lower and lower. Crumbs! He’d quite forgotten the cave part of it. Crumbs! he’d quite forgotten that he’d left the Outlaws in the cave waiting for him. The house-boy and the cook and the silver cleaning and the hose-pipe and the flood and Miss Polliter and the hens and the pig and the puppy and the infants had completely driven the cave and the Outlaws out of his head. Crumbs, wouldn’t everybody be mad!
For William had learnt by experience that with a strange perversity parents who had mourned their children as lost or dead are generally for some reason best known to themselves intensely irritated to find that they have been alive and well and near them all the time. William had little hopes of being received by his parents with the joy and affection that should be given to one miraculously restored to them from the fissures of the rock. And just as he stood pondering his next step the doctor turned and saw him. He stared at him for a few minutes, then said, “Do you want me, my boy? Anything wrong? You’re the new house-boy, aren’t you?”
William realised that he was still wearing the overalls which the house-boy had given him. He gaped at the doctor and blinked nervously, wondering whether it wouldn’t be wiser to be the new house-boy as the doctor evidently thought he was. The doctor turned to his wife.