On Monday morning, the toffee bars had finished Gwinny’s sweaters and were bigger than ever. They had to give them Caspar’s green sweater after all while they went to school. And, when Johnny came galloping up to their room that afternoon, eager to begin on his search for invisibility, to his great dismay, he met a toffee bar half under the door, coming out. He collected it – with difficulty, for it was now more like a long, heavy belt than anything else – and took it back to its box.
He told Caspar, and Caspar felt this was ominous. The green sweater was nearly all gone too. They blocked the space under the door by doubling up comics and nailing them to the bottom of the door. While the Ogre was demanding from downstairs what that noise was, and they were trying to hammer the nails as quietly as possible, a peculiar and awful smell came to their nostrils. It was rather like the smell an electric fire makes when it has gone wrong, only ten times stronger.
They tracked it to the biscuit tins and Johnny took one of the lids off. “I think they’re dead,” he said, sadly surveying the motionless plastics.
Caspar knew they were. The smell proved it. Johnny might be sad, but Caspar could not help feeling relieved. It looked as if a number of the creatures had been growing wings before they died. Caspar thought of them all buzzing round the house and was thankful they had not had the chance. “You watch the toffee bars,” he said. “I’ll go and bury these in the garden.”
He staggered down with the pile of smelly tins and took them to the very furthest corner of the garden to bury. He was digging the hole, when he looked round to see the Ogre’s pipe. It was watching him perkily from under a bush. It looked wonderfully healthy, glossy and happy. Evidently being smoked agreed with it. Caspar made a fuss of it and offered it a dead pink brick. It refused to eat it, but when Caspar’s spade turned up a worm, the pipe pounced on that and ate it greedily.
“Then it’s quite happy,” Gwinny said, when Caspar told her. “Do you think the toffee bars might be happy being eaten? That’s what they’re for, after all.”
Somehow, neither Caspar nor Johnny felt like trying. So the toffee bars continued to grow and thrive. On Tuesday morning they had to find all the cast-off trousers they could spare to make that day’s food for them. After that, they supposed they would have to think of an excuse to ask Malcolm and Douglas for clothes.
Caspar came back that afternoon to find Johnny on the stairs, frantically struggling to hold back a huge, whipping toffee bar. “Help!” said Johnny.
Caspar cast down his schoolbags and came to Johnny’s aid. They managed between them to catch the bar and hauled it, flailing and resisting, back to their room. The comics had been torn aside from the door, all the trousers eaten, and some more carpet nibbled. Nine of the toffee bars had draped themselves over the radiator above the box. Luckily, it was only lukewarm. Caspar and Johnny peeled them off it, despite their struggles. Caspar stood the box on its bottom and they thrust the toffee bars into it. But they were now big enough to climb straight out again. They could only keep them in by covering the box with a Monopoly-board and weighting that down with books.
“How many have we got?” Johnny said anxiously.
Caspar by now heartily hated the toffee bars and he did not care. “Hundreds.”
“No. I think we’ve only got ten,” said Johnny. “That means there are nine somewhere downstairs.”
“Oh, my heavens!” said Caspar.
They found the toffee bars in the Ogre’s and Sally’s bedroom. They must have gone there for warmth. The radiator there was the hottest in the house. Every one of those nine bars had draped itself over the radiator and melted on it. They were no longer creatures. Each was simply a strip of melted golden-brown toffee plastered flat to the radiator and oozing and trickling sluggishly on to the carpet. Johnny was near tears at the sight.
“Don’t be an idiot!” Caspar snapped. “Start trying to get it off. I’ll go and get a bucket of water and a scrubbing brush.”
Johnny mournfully knelt down in front of the radiator and began rather hopelessly picking at the toffee. Caspar dashed off down to the kitchen to get the fateful bucket and hurried upstairs again to the bathroom with the scrubbing brush clattering about in the bottom of the bucket. He put the bucket in the bath and was just about to turn on the hot water, when he heard the Ogre coming upstairs.
Caspar’s first impulse was to bolt the bathroom door and lie low. But he had left Johnny kneeling in front of the incriminating radiator. He knew he would have to go out on to the landing instead and distract the Ogre somehow. Caspar sighed. He went out on to the landing, perhaps not as swiftly as he might have done. And he was just in time to see the Ogre’s back as he marched into the bedroom.
There was a silence. Caspar waited, nervously clutching the scrubbing brush. The bedroom door was flung open. The Ogre, with his face distorted, shot out through it. He saw Caspar guiltily holding the brush, gave a snarl of fury, and grabbed at him. Caspar turned and raced upstairs for his bedroom. The Ogre pounded after him, much faster than Caspar had believed possible. Caspar climbed madly, and felt as if he was moving in slow motion. The Ogre climbed the stairs three at a time and seized Caspar’s arm as he was rounding the bend. Caspar was so frightened that he used the judo-thing that should have brought him twisting out from under the Ogre’s arm. But the Ogre proved unexpectedly resistant to judo. He lost his balance, but he hung on grimly. The result was that they both came heavily backwards downstairs, in a sort of stumbling rush, just as Johnny, hoping to get clear while the Ogre was chasing Caspar, dodged out of the bedroom door with everyone’s face flannels held to his chest in a wet bundle.
The Ogre, now thoroughly enraged, grabbed Johnny without letting go of Caspar and brought them together with a smash. Then he ran them into the bedroom, much as Douglas had run Caspar and Malcolm.
“Clean it,” he said, putting them in front of the radiator. “Get rid of this mess before supper or you go without. And you’re not going to be a waiter tomorrow, Johnny, not even over my dead body!” He went straight upstairs and told Douglas he could be a waiter instead. Douglas was not pleased. He came down and stood behind them as they laboured.
“Can’t you little squits keep out of trouble for one day?” he demanded. They did not answer. “Well, don’t forget I owe you for this too,” said Douglas.
After that, Caspar tried to make Johnny get rid of the other ten toffee bars. Sally’s hurt and harrowed face when the Ogre showed her the mess made him hate them more than ever. It upset Johnny too, but he would not part with the toffee bars for all that.
“Then for heaven’s sake make sure they can’t get out,” Caspar said, on Wednesday morning.
Johnny saw reason in this. They piled every book they had on top of the Monopoly board over the box and left for school feeling they had done everything they could to keep the toffee bars inside it.
They came home from school to the not quite unexpected sight of six enormous toffee bars undulating down the stairs towards them.
Caspar and Johnny, without a word, each seized three and wondered where the others were. Malcolm was just behind them on the stairs and wanted to know what was going on.
“Nothing to do with you,” panted Johnny.
“Because if—” Malcolm began.
But Sally came up behind Malcolm at that moment, saying, “Please can I ask all of you to be very careful and quiet today, particularly this evening.”
“Of course,” called Caspar. He and Johnny mounted the stairs as hard as they were able, with the toffee bars beating like cart ropes in their arms. Malcolm had seen them by this time, and his eyes were wide. The only fortunate thing was that Malcolm was in Sally’s way.
“What are you doing?” Sally said.
“Cleaning the stairs,” gasped Johnny.
They opened the door of their room, threw the toffee bars inside and shut the door firmly on them.
“Well, don’t make that kind of noise any more,” said Sally, arriving on the landing behind Malcolm. “Remember we’re trying to give a grown up party this evening. Malcolm, I think I’ll need to press your suit. Can I get it?”
She and Malcolm went to the other room. Caspar and Johnny opened the door of theirs just in time to stop two of the toffee bars coming out underneath it again. The books were scattered all over the room, and there was now a hole in one of Caspar’s blankets. The four missing toffee bars had draped themselves over the lukewarm radiator again. Caspar and Johnny once more peeled them off it and packed them into the box with the other six. Then they piled not only books, but cricket bats, train sets, roller skates and any other heavy thing they could lay hands on onto the Monopoly-board, until the heap stretched halfway up the wall. The box still heaved and bulged beneath it.
“Oh, this is hopeless, Johnny!” Caspar said, adding his pink football to the heap. “Please get rid of them.”
By this time, Johnny was feeling much the same. But he wanted to be the one to suggest it. “I’ll think about it,” he said, and busied himself with the chemistry set.
Then Gwinny came in and looked at the heap and the heaving box in undisguised alarm. “Johnny, you must get rid of them,” she said.
But this only made Johnny obstinate. “They’re only cold, poor things,” he said. “They can’t help it.” And, after nearly an hour of arguing, he had managed to convince himself that he was sorry for the toffee bars and had never wanted to get rid of them at all. “And they’d freeze in the garden,” he said.
At that moment, Douglas thumped at the door and called out crossly. Caspar hurried to open it in case Douglas came in and asked about the heap of things on the box. But Douglas did not attempt to come in. He simply stood on the landing looking worried and annoyed. “One of you’s going to have to be a waiter after all,” he said. “Malcolm can’t.”
“Why not?” said Caspar.
Douglas hesitated. “Oh, come and look at him,” he said at length. “Serve him right if you all laugh your heads off!”
They all trooped across the landing after Douglas, feeling very interested. Douglas flung open the door of the room and bowed to them as they went in.
“Lady and gentlemen,” he said. “My brother, the—Hey, Malcolm! You were orange when I went out!”
“You didn’t have to show everyone,” Malcolm said uncomfortably.
He was a beautiful bright green all over, even his hair and his fingernails. His mouth and his eyes were a slightly darker green. He looked very peculiar indeed. But, while they were staring at him, quite confounded, he became more peculiar still. Another colour seemed to be emerging through the green. At first they could not tell what colour it was going to be. Then it spread slowly, stronger and stronger, like rings in water, or even more like the coloured circles you see when you press your eyes, and turned out to be deep crimson.
“The green was quite pretty,” Gwinny said, in some disappointment.
“How did you get like that?” said Caspar – and had a feeling he had said something like this before.
“Doing an experiment,” the now crimson Malcolm admitted. He looked as if he had some dire disease.
“Stupid little ass!” said Douglas. “I’d warned you.”
“You didn’t do it on purpose, I suppose?” Johnny said suspiciously. “So as not to be a waiter.”
Malcolm looked indignant and began, at the same time, to flush slowly indigo. “Of course not! It was something I was doing.” He waved towards the table. Gwinny kept her eyes carefully on the experiment set up there, because Malcolm now looked as if he were turning into dark stone and it worried her. “I was just pouring in Irid. col.,” Malcolm explained, “and it splashed in my eye and I went blue.”
“What were you doing?” said Johnny.
“Something complicated,” said Malcolm. “Looking for invisibility, if you must know.”
“Oh, so am I!” Johnny said in surprise. To Gwinny’s relief, Malcolm began to turn yellow. She felt he looked more natural like that, even if it was a bright daffodil yellow. “Bet I find it first,” said Johnny.
“Who cares?” said Douglas. “Which of you’s going to be a waiter?”
“It’ll have to be me, I suppose,” Caspar said reluctantly.
“Then go down and tell the Ogre,” said Douglas. “I’ll fix Sally.”
“How?” said Caspar. “If she sees Malcolm like that, she’ll have a fit. Hey! You called him the Ogre too!”
“Well, he is, isn’t he?” said Douglas. “And I’m going to tell Sally Malcolm’s shamming ill in order not to be a waiter.” Malcolm gave a cry of indignation and went lavender-coloured. “Serve you right,” Douglas said unfeelingly. “If you can think of any other way of stopping her coming to look at you, tell me.”
Malcolm obviously could not. “Cheer up, Malcolm,” Gwinny said, seeing how dejected he looked. “That’s a really pretty colour.” Malcolm sighed. He was beginning to be a deep chestnut brown when Caspar left the room to find the Ogre.
The Ogre, with his pipe contentedly purring in his mouth, was in the dining room, moving the table. When Caspar came in, he said, “Take the other end and lift it over to the wall. Then go away.”
While they were carrying the table, Caspar explained – rather haltingly – that Malcolm seemed to be ill. “So I think I’ll have to be a waiter instead,” he said.
The Ogre put the table down with a thump. “No,” he said. Caspar was intensely relieved. “You’re bound to do something unspeakable,” said the Ogre.
“I swear I won’t,” Caspar said unconvincingly.
“No,” said the Ogre. “If you’re there, all I’ll be able to think of is what horrible thing you’re going to do next. I’ll make do with Douglas, thank you.”
Caspar should have gone away at once after that. But he wanted to be able to assure Douglas that the Ogre refused whatever he said. So he said, “But if I promise—”
“Then you’ll break that promise,” said the Ogre, “as surely as you’ll break all the wine glasses.”
Thankfully Caspar turned to leave. But he had to stop rather suddenly as Sally hurried in with a tray of wine glasses.
“Don’t bring those near Caspar!” said the Ogre.
Sally laughed. “Isn’t it a pity Malcolm’s unwell?” she said, and Caspar could see she knew Malcolm was perfectly all right. “But it’s an ill wind. I rather like the idea of a representative from both sides. Don’t you, Jack?”
The Ogre looked at her balefully. “All right,” he said, to Caspar’s dismay. “You win. But don’t blame me if he wrecks everything.”
“Does your suit still fit you, Caspar?” said Sally.
Three hours later, the lower part of the house had been feverishly cleared until it looked like somewhere completely different. Gwinny was hanging about outside the bathroom watching her mother put on make-up. Sally was wearing a silvery dress and Gwinny could not take her eyes off it.
“Doesn’t Mummy look beautiful?” she said to the Ogre. She was rather surprised to find he agreed.
Upstairs, Malcolm was turning from puce to mustard-colour, and Johnny was anxiously watching the mound of things heaving above the toffee bars. Downstairs in the kitchen, Caspar and Douglas, both feeling tight in the sleeve and constricted in the neck, were moodily standing by the trays and plates of food spread ready on the kitchen table. Caspar was feeling that Fate had played him a dirty trick. Douglas was worrying about Malcolm.
“Sally’s bound to find out tomorrow,” he said. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Have you tried washing his eye?” asked Caspar.
“I thought of that. It doesn’t work. He is a stupid, careless idiot!” said Douglas.
“You sounded just like the Ogre when you said that,” said Caspar.
“Are you trying to be funny?” growled Douglas.
“No,” said Caspar, who was in no mood to be bullied. “Sometimes I’m surprised Malcolm even survives, the way you sit on him.”
Douglas glared at him, which made him look like the Ogre too. “If you—”
But the doorbell rang. Douglas had to hurry to let in a troop of cheerful guests. After them came more, and more. People filled the dining room, the sitting room and then packed into the hall, where they stood shouting happily at one another. The Ogre pushed his way among them with bottles of wine, and both Douglas and Caspar were far too busy pushing their way after him with trays of food to think of being annoyed with one another for some time. Then they met again in the hall, where the noise seemed to be solid and Caspar could see nothing but people’s backs. Caspar’s head was aching, and he was hating being a waiter even more than he had thought he would. Nobody seemed to want food anyway.
The Ogre was pouring a drink for a lady standing at the foot of the stairs, and Douglas was just beside him. “Oh, are these your two sons?” the lady cried shrilly to the Ogre. The Ogre, who was too busy pouring wine to listen, nodded. “How nice!” exclaimed the lady. “I could see they were brothers. They look so much alike.”
Douglas and Caspar looked at one another unlovingly over their trays. “This was all I needed!” Douglas said into Caspar’s ear. “Fancy being taken for one of your family!”
“Same here,” said Caspar. And it was annoying to see from the hall mirror that he and Douglas were, in fact, not unlike one another. Caspar turned away crossly from their reflections and saw a toffee bar making its way downstairs.
Douglas had seen it too. Caspar could tell from the expression on his face in the mirror when he turned back to balance his tray on the hall stand. But Douglas said nothing. He simply held his tray of food persuasively out to the lady.
“Oh, those do look nice!” she said. “I oughtn’t, you know. I’m supposed to be slimming.”
While her attention was occupied, Caspar slipped round her and went flying up the stairs. He caught the toffee bar on the fifth stair and lugged it on upwards, raging.
Johnny was near the head of the next flight, looking absolutely desperate, wrestling with an octopus-like bundle of threshing toffee bars. Malcolm, at that moment a startling shade of orange, was out on the landing holding another. He looked very nervous of it. It kept curling round his arm and he kept shaking it off.
“What on earth do you mean, letting them out like this!” Caspar roared, with a ferocity which would have done credit to the Ogre.
“I can’t help it!” panted Johnny. “They keep getting out whatever I do.”
“Then get rid of them. Now. This moment,” ordered Caspar. “This one was right down near the hall.”
“How can I?” demanded Johnny. “I can’t take them down through that beastly party, can I?”
Malcolm, flushing deep blue, suggested, “Why not throw them out of the window?”
“I’m not going to hurt them!” Johnny said hysterically.
“All right,” thundered Caspar, “if you’re that soft, you can take them to the bathroom, put them in the bath and run hot water on them until they melt. And do it now! You help him,” he said to Malcolm, since Malcolm plainly knew all about it anyway.
“But—” said Malcolm.
“No, I—” began Johnny.
“Do as you’re told!” Caspar howled at them. He slung the strayed toffee bar at Malcolm and went rushing away downstairs to retrieve his tray before someone knocked it off the hall stand. As he galloped downstairs, the noise and smell from the party rose about him in warm waves. As he rounded the last bend, he had a glimpse of Sally, looking very busy and pink and happy, pushing among the shouting people, and he realised the party was going very well. But suppose the toffee bars got loose in it! It did not bear thinking of.
Douglas had rescued Caspar’s tray. He was waiting at the bottom of the stairs as Caspar came hurtling down. “Here you are,” he said. “That was one of the Animal Spirits things, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Caspar, too distraught to wonder how he knew. “And that stupid little fool Johnny insisted on keeping them, and now they’re all over the place!”
“What’s he doing about them?”
“I told him to put them in the bath and melt them,” Caspar said, rather pleased with his idea.
“Go back and tell him not to risk it,” Douglas said urgently. “They’ll swim like fish, if ours are anything to go by, and think how near the bathroom is! Go on. Go back and stop him. Hurry!”
He glanced nervously over his shoulder. Caspar looked too and found that the Ogre was pushing his way across the hall, obviously coming to ask what he and Douglas thought they were doing. But Douglas pushed Caspar towards the stairs and Caspar fled up them again, feeling the force of the Ogre’s glare like a hot blast on his back.
When he arrived in the bathroom, it was full of steam. The plug was in the bath, the hot tap – which never ran properly – was trickling hot water, and Johnny and Malcolm were obediently lowering struggling toffee bars into it.
“Take them out again,” Caspar said breathlessly. “Douglas says they’ll swim and not to risk it.”
“Oh, blast Douglas!” said Johnny. “Malcolm’s already told me that and I’m going to risk it.”
Caspar looked at Malcolm properly and found he was his right colour again. “Thank goodness!” he said. “That’s one thing gone right, at least. How do you know they’ll swim?”
“Because all ours did,” said Malcolm. “Douglas tried to drown the dustballs in Gwinny’s room and the ones in ours, and he couldn’t. Would you like to see them?”
“No!” bellowed Caspar. “Get those toffee bars out. Throw them out of the window. And I’m sending Douglas up in five minutes to make sure you’ve done it!” Feeling extremely hectic, he pelted down into the roaring party again.
As soon as he had gone, Johnny said to Malcolm, “What do you mean – dustballs?”
“Just lumps of dust,” said Malcolm. “At least, we think they were, but they grew. They look more like mice now. Shall I show you?”
“If you like,” Johnny said, with alacrity. He took a look at the toffee bars in the bath. They were evidently enjoying the warm water. Each bar was nestling down into it, and two were struggling for the place under the trickling tap. The water was already brownish with melted toffee. “Caspar can give orders all he likes,” he said. “But you can see that’s the kindest end for them. Come on.”
He shut the bathroom door reverently and followed Malcolm up to his room. There, Malcolm opened the glass cupboard and showed him a shoebox on the bottom shelf. Huddled in it were six or seven greyish, fluffy lumps. Johnny was charmed. To his mind, they were even better than the toffee bars. He admired them wholeheartedly.
Malcolm was obviously pleased by Johnny’s admiration. “They’re not bad,” he admitted. “But they keep getting out. There used to be loads more.” Then, as if he were letting Johnny into an even better secret, he said, “And these are my pencils.”
Johnny, extremely flattered and quite lost in admiration, stared open-mouthed at the six pencils standing upright in a row on top of the cupboard. “What do they eat?”
“Wood-shavings,” said Malcolm. “I have to keep sharpening ordinary pencils for them, or they eat the furniture. They only eat at night too. They hop about and keep Douglas awake, and he throws things at them. That’s how he knocked the Animal Spirits over and made the dustballs.”
“But how did they get up to Gwinny’s room?” said Johnny. “You said—”
“No. I made those.” Malcolm said, looking a little self-conscious. “I spilt Animal Spirits in her room when I – when I was—Well, come and see, if you like.”
So once again Johnny followed Malcolm upstairs. The noise of the party faded away behind them, and everything faded out of Johnny’s mind except amazement at Malcolm’s secret cleverness and acute curiosity about what he would see in Gwinny’s room.
Gwinny was kneeling in the middle of her room cooking something in an old tobacco tin over the spirit lamp from Malcolm’s chemistry set. Seeing Johnny, she looked alarmed and rather guilty.
“It’s all right,” said Malcolm. “Can I show him the people?”
“If you want,” Gwinny said cautiously.
Malcolm beckoned to Johnny. “Over here. But go quietly, because they get awfully angry if you frighten them.”
Mystified, Johnny went to the place Malcolm showed him, to one side of Gwinny’s doll’s house, and Gwinny watched him rather apprehensively while Malcolm leaned forward and gently eased off the front of the doll’s house. Johnny peered past him into its small dining room. The ten doll’s house dolls were sitting at the table, in the middle of eating supper. They were only too clearly alive. A number of them looked round irritably at the gap in the front of their house. Johnny could not help laughing at the expression on their faces.
Gwinny relaxed. “Are they ready for their pudding?” she asked.
“I think so,” said Malcolm.
“Well, it won’t be long,” said Gwinny.
One of the men dolls left his chair and came to the gap. He pointed at Johnny and shouted something in a small grating voice that reminded Johnny of a tummy rumbling. Johnny laughed again, rather nervously.
“I don’t understand their language,” Gwinny explained. “But I think he means go away, they’re having supper. Move over and let me give them this.”
Johnny obediently moved, and watched, fascinated, while Gwinny spooned warmed-up custard into a tureen one of the women dolls fetched for her. He could not have described his thoughts. He felt he ought to be angry with Gwinny for making friends with Malcolm behind his back like this – except that he felt quite friendly towards Malcolm himself. He felt extremely honoured to be shown all Malcolm’s secrets too. His only unpleasant feeling was a certain amount of envy. Malcolm had done such clever things with the Animal Spirits.
“I must get them a kitchen,” said Gwinny. “They insist on a hot meal a day. But Malcolm lends me his lamp very kindly.”
Malcolm was looking shyly at Johnny, to see what he thought of the people. “It’s a terribly good idea,” Johnny said. “I wish I’d thought of it.”
“We didn’t do anything as good as the Ogre’s pipe,” said Malcolm. “I thought Douglas was going to burst when he saw it.”
“My people are quite as good!” Gwinny said indignantly.
“What else did you do?” asked Johnny.
Malcolm looked a little shamefaced. “Well – Douglas did it actually. He said it was to pay Caspar out.”
“Did what?” Johnny asked suspiciously.
“I think I’d better show you,” Malcolm said glumly, and got up.
Since Gwinny was quite as anxious as Johnny to know just what Douglas had done, she followed the boys downstairs, into the noise and smell of the party again. To their surprise, Malcolm took them into Johnny’s and Caspar’s room this time, and over to the cupboard.
“In here,” he said, opening it. “You’ll curse.” Then he said, in considerable dismay, “Oh dear!”
Johnny thrust him aside and looked in. On the bottom shelf, comfortably curled up in the remains of Douglas’s old sweater, were the two largest toffee bars yet. They were the dark treacly kind and had probably been the large sevenpenny size to begin with. By now, they were as big as conger eels. And, in a wriggling heap beside them, were at least a dozen tiny toffee bars, still too small to have cast their red and yellow wrappers.
“Oh!” exclaimed Gwinny. “They’ve had babies! How sweet!”
“Sweet!” Johnny said bitterly. All he could think about was the number of them. “Oh, blast Douglas! And I daren’t tell Caspar. He’d go mad!” Talking of Caspar took his mind to other things. A troublesome thought struck him. “I say! Did I turn the bathwater off, or not?”
Caspar, meanwhile, was still trying to get hold of Douglas. He could see him in the doorway of the sitting room as he came downstairs. But Sally was at the foot of the stairs talking to the lady who thought he was Douglas’s brother.
“Darling, what have you been doing?” she said. “Do, please, stop disappearing like this.”
“Sorry,” said Caspar. “It’s the younger ones, really.”
“Ah, you take your new responsibilities seriously, do you?” said the lady, and made Caspar want to scream quietly.
He rescued his tray and set off towards where he had seen Douglas, but Sally said, “Not that way, Caspar. You go to the dining room.”
Caspar pushed his way towards the dining room, meaning to go the other way as soon as he was out of sight. The more he thought about it, the less he trusted Johnny and Malcolm either to throw the toffee bars out of a window or to melt them without letting most of them loose. Only Douglas, he felt, could see that they did it. And he thought he ought to set Douglas’s mind at rest about Malcolm too. But luck was against him. The Ogre was in the doorway of the dining room. He was not pleased with Caspar, and let him know it.
“Oh, are you with us again?” he said in a loud voice. “I hoped you’d gone for good.” A number of people around the Ogre laughed heartily. Caspar thought it a typically mean and Ogrish thing to say. “They’re shouting for food in the dining room,” added the Ogre.
So Caspar was forced to go into the dining room without having found Douglas. He thought the best thing to do was to work his way to the other end, go out through the kitchen and from the kitchen to the hall. But it took him some time. All the people packed into the dining room seemed ravenous for food suddenly. They called Caspar this way and that and wanted to know if there were any sausages.
“I’ll go and see,” Caspar promised. He was more uneasy than ever, and he felt he simply had to find out what Johnny was up to. Leaving his nearly empty tray on the sideboard, he pushed his way to the other end of the dining room.
He had nearly fought his way to the kitchen door, when something warm splashed on his wrist. It was followed by a warm wet splash on his nose. He looked up. Most of the people round Caspar were looking up too, and looking annoyed. The reason was a brownish spreading stain on the ceiling. It doubled in size while Caspar looked at it, and the drips came faster and faster.
Caspar dived for the kitchen door. The drips, at the same moment, turned into a waterfall. Water fairly thundered down. Sally opened the kitchen door, holding a tray of sausages. She and Caspar stared at one another through a steaming cascade.
“What’s happening?” said Sally.
“I’ll find out,” said Caspar. He rushed through the waterfall into the kitchen and ran, steaming and gasping, into the hall. Water was coming through there too, and he got another ducking, shut his eyes and ran into Douglas coming the other way.
“What the—?”
“They’ve let the bath run over,” said Caspar. “Come on.”
He and Douglas struggled for the stairs. From the dining room came the sounds and smells of a tropical rainstorm. Sopping people, crying out with dismay, came surging out into the hall and made it difficult for the two boys to get through at all. When they reached the foot of the stairs, the lady who thought they were brothers was no longer there. Her place had been taken by a fat jolly man who playfully prevented them from getting by – unless the lady had turned into a man. Caspar felt anything was possible just then.
“What’s going on, eh?” said the fat man, blocking the end of the stairs.
“Accident,” said Douglas. “Please let us through.”
“Reinforcements at hand! Taran-taran-tarar!” shouted the fat man and sat heavily on the bottom stair. They climbed over him desperately and he tried to hit them as they went.
They pounded up the stairs and reached the bathroom at the same time as Johnny, Malcolm and Gwinny. The door was open. The landing was a fog of steam. Through it, dimly, they saw the bathroom floor awash and the bath brimful of slightly toffee-coloured water.
“You stupid little oaf!” Douglas thundered at Johnny.
“I told you not to!” bawled Caspar.
“I didn’t mean—” said Johnny.
The Ogre breasted the steam and materialised in the bathroom door. He was carrying the backbrush. “Which of you did this?” he enquired in an unpleasantly quiet voice.
“Er,” said Johnny. “Me.”
“And me,” said Malcolm bravely, though he was white with terror. “I distracted his attention at a crucial moment.”
“Then,” said the Ogre, “the rest of you get downstairs and share out umbrellas or something. You two come in here.”
Johnny found he had been right to postpone being hit by the Ogre. It was an exceedingly unpleasant experience. To Caspar’s mind, the most unpleasant part was what the Ogre said to Sally after the last draggled guest had departed.