'CHACK-CHACK-CHACK! Chack-chack-chack!' The jackdaws circled round the old castle, callingto one another in their cheerful, friendly voices. The five children looked up and watched them.
'You can see the grey at the backs of their necks,' said Dick. 'I wonder how many years jackdawshave lived round and about this castle.'
'I suppose the sticks lying all over this courtyard must have been dropped by them,' said Julian.
'They make their nests of big twigs1 - really, they must drop as many as they use! Just look at that pileover there!'
'Very wasteful2 of them!' said Dick. 'I wish they would come and drop some near our caravan3 to saveme going to get firewood each day for the fire!'
They were standing4 at the great archway that made the entrance to the castle. Anne grew impatient.
'Do let's look at the towers now,' she said.
They went to the nearest one, but it was almost impossible to realize that it had been a tower. It wasjust a great heap of fallen stones, piled one on top of another.
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They went to the only good tower. They had hoped to find some remains5 of a stone stairway, but totheir great disappointment they could not even look up into the tower! One of the inner walls hadfallen in, and the floor was piled up, completely blocked. There was no sign of a stairway.
Either it too had fallen in, or it was covered by the stones of the ruined wall.
Julian was astonished. It was obvious that nobody could possibly climb up the tower from the inside!
Then how in the world could there have been a face at the tower window? He began to feel ratheruncomfortable. Was it a real face? If not what could it have been?
'This is queer,' said Dick, thinking the same as Julian, and pointing to the heaped-up stones on theground floor of the tower. 'It does look absolutely impossible for anyone to get up into the top of thetower. Well - what about that face then?'
'Let's go and ask that old woman if there is any way at all of getting up into the tower,' said Julian.
'She might know.'
So they left the castle, walked across the courtyard, back to the little tower in the outer wall thatguarded the big gateway6. The old woman was sitting by the turnstile, knitting.
'Could you tell us, please, if there is any way of getting up into the tower over there?' asked Julian.
The old woman answered something, but it was difficult to understand a word she said.
However, as she shook her head vigorously, it was plain that there was no way up to the tower. It wasvery puzzling.
'Is there a better plan of the castle than this?' asked Julian, showing his guide-book. 'A plan of thedungeons, for instance - and a plan of the towers as they once were, before they were ruined?'
The old lady said something that sounded like 'Society of Reservation of something-or-other.'
'What did you say?' asked Julian, patiently.
The witch-like woman was evidently getting tired of these questions. She opened a big book thatshowed the amount of people and fees paid, and looked down it. She put her finger on somethingwritten there, and showed it to Julian.
'Society for Preservation8 of Old Buildings,' he read. 'Oh - did somebody come from them lately?
Would they know more than it says in the guide-book?'
'Yes,' said the old woman. 'Two men came. They spent all day here - last Thursday. You ask thatSociety what you want to know - not me. I only take the money.'
She sounded quite intelligible9 all of a sudden. Then she relapsed into mumbles10 again, and no one 60could understand a word.
'Anyway, she's told us what we want to know,' said Julian. 'We'll telephone the Society and ask themif they can tell us any more about the castle. There may be secret passages and things not shown inthe guide-book at all.'
'How exciting!' said George, thrilled. 'I say, let's go back to that tower and look at the outside of it. Itmight be climbable there.'
They went back to see - but it wasn't climbable. Although the stones it was built of were unevenenough to form slight foot-holds and hand-holds it would be much too dangerous for anyone to try toclimb up - even the cat-footed Jo. For one thing it would not be possible to tell which stones wereloose and crumbling11 until the climber caught hold - and then down he would go!
All the same, Jo was willing to try. 'I might be able to do it,' she said, slipping off one of her shoes.
'Put your shoe on,' said Dick at once. 'You are NOT going to try any tricks of that sort. There isn'teven ivy12 for you to cling to.'
Jo put back her shoe sulkily, looking astonishingly like George as she scowled13. And then, toeveryone's enormous astonishment14, who should come bounding up to them but Timmy!
'Timmy! Wherever have you come from?' said George, in surprise. 'There's no way in except throughthe turnstile - and the door behind it is shut. We shut it ourselves! How did you get in?'
'Woof,' said Timmy, trying to explain. He ran to the good tower, made his way over the blocks ofstone lying about and stopped by a small space between three or four of the fallen stones. 'Woof,'
he said again, and pawed at one of the stones.
'He came out there,' said George. She tugged15 at a big stone, but she couldn't move it an inch, ofcourse. 'I don't know how in the world Timmy squeezed himself out of this space - it doesn't look bigenough for a rabbit. Certainly none of us could get inside!'
'What puzzles me,' said Julian, 'is how Timmy got in from the outside. We left him right outside thecastle - so he must have run round the outer wall somewhere and found a small hole. He must havesqueezed into that.'
'Yes. That's right,' said Dick. 'We know the walls are eight feet thick, so he must have found a placewhere a bit of it had broken at the bottom, and forced his way in. But - would there be a hole rightthrough the whole thickness of eight feet?'
This was really puzzling. They all looked at Timmy, and he wagged his tail expectantly. Then he 61barked loudly and capered16 round as if he wanted a game.
The door behind the turnstile opened at once and the old lady appeared. 'How did that dog get here?'
she called. 'He's to go out at once!'
'We don't know how he got in,' said Dick. 'Is there a hole in the outer wall?'
'No,' said the old woman. 'Not one. You must have let that dog in when I wasn't looking. He's to goout. And you too. You've been here long enough.'
'We may as well go,' said Julian. 'We've seen all there is to see - or all that we are allowed to see.
I'm quite sure there is some way of getting up into that tower although the stairway is in ruins.
I'm going to ring up the Society for the Preservation of Old Buildings and ask them to put me intouch with the fellows who examined the castle last week. They must have been experts.'
'Yes. They would probably have a complete plan,' said Dick. 'Secret passages, dungeons7, hiddenrooms and all - if there are any!'
They took Timmy by the collar, and went out through the turnstiles, click-click-click. 'I feel likehaving a couple of doughnuts at the dairy,' said George. 'And some lemonade. Anyone else feel thesame?'
Everyone did, including Timmy, who barked at once.
'Timmy's silly over those doughnuts,' said George. 'He just wolfs them down.'
'It's a great waste,' said Anne. 'He ate four last time - more than anyone else had.'
They walked down to the village. 'You go and order what we want,' said Julian, 'and I'll just go andlook up this Society. It may have an office somewhere in this district.'
He went to the post office to use the telephone there, and the rest of them trooped in at the door of thebright little dairy. The plump shopwoman welcomed them beamingly. She considered them her bestcustomers, and they certainly were.
They were each on their second doughnut when Julian came back. 'Any news?' asked Dick.
'Yes,' said Julian. 'Peculiar17 news, though. I found the address of the Society - they've got a branchabout fifty miles from here, that deals with all the old buildings for a radius18 of a hundred miles. Iasked if they had any recent booklet about the castle.'
He stopped to take a doughnut, and bit into it. The others waited patiently while he chewed.
'They said they hadn't. The last time they had checked over Faynights Castle was two years ago.'
'But - but what about those two men who came from the Society last week, then?' said George.
'Yes. That's what I said,' answered Julian, taking another bite. 'And here's the peculiar bit. They 62said they didn't know what I was talking about, nobody had been sent there from the Society, andwho was I, anyhow?'
'Hmm!' said Dick, thinking hard. 'Then - those men were examining and exploring the castle for theirown reasons!'
'I agree,' said Julian. 'And I can't help thinking that the face at the window and those two men havesomething to do with one another. It's quite clear that the men had nothing whatever to do with anyofficial society - they merely gave it as an excuse because they wanted to find out what kind ofhiding-place the castle had.'
The others stared at him, feeling a familiar excitement rising in them - what George called the'adventure feeling'.
'Then there was a real face at that tower window, and there is a way of getting up there,' said Anne.
'Yes,' said Julian. 'I know it sounds very far-fetched, but I do think there is just a possibility that thosetwo scientists have gone there. I don't know if you read it in the paper, but one of them, JeffreyPottersham, has written a book on famous ruins. He would know all about Faynights Castle, becauseit's a very well-known one. If they wanted to hide somewhere till the hue19 and cry had died down, andthen escape to another country, well...'
'They could hide in the tower, and then quietly slip out from the castle one night, go down to the sea,and hire a fishing-boat!' cried Dick, taking the words out of Julian's mouth. 'They'd be across theChannel in no time.'
'Yes. That's what I'd worked out too,' said Julian. 'I rather think I'll telephone Uncle Quentin aboutthis. I'll describe the face as well as I can to him. I feel this is all rather too important to manage quiteon our own. Those men may have extremely important secrets.'
'It's an adventure again,' said Jo, her face serious, but her eyes very bright. 'Oh - I'm glad I'm in ittoo!'
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twigs
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| 细枝，嫩枝( twig的名词复数 ) | |
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wasteful
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| adj.（造成）浪费的，挥霍的 | |
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caravan
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| n.大蓬车；活动房屋 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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gateway
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| n.大门口，出入口，途径，方法 | |
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dungeons
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| n.地牢( dungeon的名词复数 ) | |
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preservation
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| n.保护，维护，保存，保留，保持 | |
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intelligible
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| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
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mumbles
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| 含糊的话或声音，咕哝( mumble的名词复数 ) | |
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crumbling
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| adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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ivy
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| n.常青藤，常春藤 | |
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scowled
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| 怒视，生气地皱眉( scowl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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tugged
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| v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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capered
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| v.跳跃，雀跃( caper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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radius
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| n.半径，半径范围；有效航程，范围，界限 | |
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hue
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| n.色度；色调；样子 | |
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