Indigo Rubber,” said a much deeper voice than Malcolm’s. “What’s so special that I can’t come in?”
Caspar looked up helplessly at Johnny’s alarmed face. “I thought you didn’t like Indigo Rubber,” he shouted through the door.
“I’ve come round to them,” Douglas called back. “And I’ve got some friends coming tonight who want to hear it.”
“You can’t have it,” called Caspar.
“But I promised them,” said Douglas. “Be a sport.”
“You’d no business to promise them my records!” Caspar said, with real indignation. “You can’t have them. Go away.”
“I knew you’d go and be mean about it,” said Douglas. “It’s typical. I only want to borrow their second LP for an hour this evening. I won’t hurt it, and you can come and listen, if you like. Father’s said we can have it in the dining room.”
“You should have asked me first,” said Caspar. But put like that, Douglas’s request was reasonable, and he did not want to be thought mean.
“Tell him to come back for it in five minutes,” Johnny whispered from the ceiling. “Then get me some water.”
Caspar drew his breath to shout, but Douglas had lost patience. “You are a mean little squirt, aren’t you?” he said. “It’s no good trying to be polite to you. You lend me that record, or watch out!” The doorknob turned sharply under Caspar’s hands and the door began to open.
“Come back in five minutes!” Caspar said desperately, his braced feet sliding.
“And give you time to hide it?” said Douglas. “What kind of a fool do you think I am?” The door opened nearly a foot, and Douglas’s leg and shoulder came through the gap. It was clear that the rest of him was following.
Johnny did the only thing he could think of. With a strong thrust at the ceiling and a desperate kick of his legs, he got himself to the open window and, as the door crashed open and Douglas plunged into the room, he pushed himself out of it. And, whether it was the draught from the door, or the different conditions outside, Johnny promptly soared. The last Caspar saw of him was his bare foot and his shoe vanishing upwards beyond the top of the window.
Luckily, Douglas was looking malevolently at Caspar. “Got any more mean excuses?” he said.
“It’s not mean. You shouldn’t promise things that aren’t yours,” said Caspar. But his heart was not in the argument. All he could think of was Johnny soaring away into the heavens.
“Well, I’d have asked you this morning, only you’d gone by the time I’d persuaded Father to let me have the dining room,” Douglas said. “Are you going to lend it me, or not?”
“You can have them all. They’re down there by my bed. And I’ve got their new one too,” Caspar said hastily.
“Their new one!” Douglas said delightedly. “Really? Brainpan, you mean?” He waded over to Caspar’s bed and went on his knees by the window to sort out the records. Instead of taking the records at once, he knelt there looking disgusted. “I wonder you can hear these,” he said. “They’re coated with dust. Hasn’t anyone ever told you to keep LPs clean? You’re ruining them and your stylus.”
“I know, but I’ve lost my cleaner,” said Caspar, almost beside himself with impatience to get to the window and see what had become of Johnny.
“I’m not surprised,” said Douglas, looking round the crowded room. “You can borrow mine, if you’re careful with it. I’ve got one of those attachments now. Thanks, anyway. I’d better go and give these a clean.” And to Caspar’s relief, Douglas got up and waded to the door.
Caspar sped to the window and craned out of it. Johnny was not far off. He was clinging like a monkey to the corner of the house, about four feet above the window. “You can come back now,” Caspar told him. “He’s gone.”
“I can’t!” Johnny said tensely.
“Why not?”
“It’s worn off. I’m stuck. I can’t hold on much longer, either.”
Caspar felt rather sick. He looked down and realised that the ground was a very long distance away. Worse still, the Ogre’s car was now parked on the gravel at the side of the garden. For two very good reasons, Johnny had better not go down. He looked up. The roof and the gutter, which came lower at the back of the house, were only three feet or so above Johnny’s head.
“Can you climb up and grab the roof?” he said.
“What do you think I’ve been trying to do?” snapped Johnny. “It’s all I can do to stay in one place.”
“Then hang on. I’ll go out of the trap door in the loft,” said Caspar, “and see if I can pull you up. Hold on.”
“What do you expect me to do? Let go?” said Johnny.
Caspar sped to the door and up the stairs that led to Gwinny’s room. The loft was behind a low door opposite Gwinny’s. Gwinny came out to see what was going on as Caspar was frenziedly rattling at it.
“You don’t pull, you push,” she said. “Is there something the matter?”
“Yes,” said Caspar. “Johnny’s stranded halfway up the house and I’ve got to pull him up from here. Where’s the Ogre?”
“In the study, I think. I’ll fetch my dressing gown cord,” said Gwinny.
Caspar crashed the door open inwards and hurried into the loft. There was no proper floor, and he had to jump from joist to joist, which was not easy in the dim light. He was struggling to open the trap door to the roof, when Gwinny came crawling after him with the dressing gown cord in her mouth so that she could use both hands for crawling.
“Th’Ogre,” she said indistinctly.
“Where?”
“I don’t know,” Gwinny said, removing the cord. “But I could hear him shouting at someone. He sounded awfully angry.”
“I hope it’s Malcolm. And I hope it keeps them both busy,” said Caspar. “Help me with this bolt.”
It was no easy matter to open the trap. The bolts were rusty, and the Ogre had packed putty round the door itself to keep the rain out after he had fetched the muddy sweater in off the chimney. To Caspar’s frantic imagination, it took them an hour to unpack it again. Rust, dust, putty and cobwebs spattered down on them, and Caspar, unwisely bracing his foot between two joists, managed to put his knee through the plaster floor. But they got the door open in the end. Caspar hastily raised it and stood up into a cold sunset to lower it on to the tiles of the roof. Gwinny stood up beside him.
“Shall I climb out? I’m the lightest,” she said.
“No. You’re to stay there,” said Caspar. “It’s dangerous.”
He had one leg out over the edge of the trap, when, to his amazement, Johnny, looking white and shaken, appeared over the edge of the roof and started to crawl up it towards him.
“How did you climb up?” said Caspar. Johnny, for some reason, fiercely shook his head at him. “You must have done,” said Caspar. “You—”
The head and shoulders of the Ogre appeared behind Johnny. Even for the Ogre, they looked grim. All Caspar could do was to make haste to get himself back inside the loft again.
It seemed that one of the neighbours had seen Johnny clinging to the side of the house and telephoned the Ogre. Probably it was just as well. Johnny had been precious near letting go by the time the Ogre had tied two ladders