value. It has reposed in the sandal-wood caskets of princesses, and in the rose-attar-scented treasure-houses of kings. Never, never, had any one degraded it by walking on it – except in the way of business, when wishes were required, and then they always took their shoes off. And you—’
‘Oh, don’t!’ said Jane, very near tears. ‘You know you’d never have been hatched at all if it hadn’t been for Mother wanting a carpet for us to walk on.’
‘You needn’t have walked so much or so hard!’ said the bird, ‘but come, dry that crystal tear, and I will relate to you the story of the Princess Zulieka, the Prince of Asia, and the magic carpet.’
‘Relate away,’ said Anthea – ‘I mean, please do.’
‘The Princess Zulieka, fairest of royal ladies,’ began the bird, ‘had in her cradle been the subject of several enchantments. Her grandmother had been in her day—’
But what in her day Zulieka’s grandmother had been was destined never to be revealed, for Cyril and Robert suddenly burst into the room, and on each brow were the traces of deep emotion. On Cyril’s pale brow stood beads of agitation and perspiration, and on the scarlet brow of Robert was a large black smear.
‘What ails ye both?’ asked the Phoenix, and it added tartly that story-telling was quite impossible if people would come interrupting like that.
‘Oh, do shut up, for any sake!’ said Cyril, sinking into a chair.
Robert smoothed the ruffled golden feathers, adding kindly:
‘Squirrel doesn’t mean to be a beast. It’s only that the most awful thing has happened, and stories don’t seem to matter so much. Don’t be cross. You won’t be when you’ve heard what’s happened.’
‘Well, what has happened?’ said the bird, still rather crossly; and Anthea and Jane paused with long needles poised in air, and long needlefuls of Scotch heather-mixture fingering wool drooping from them.
‘The most awful thing you can possibly think of,’ said Cyril. ‘That nice chap – our own burglar – the police have got him, on suspicion of stolen cats. That’s what his brother’s missus, told me.’
‘Oh, begin at the beginning!’ cried Anthea impatiently.
‘Well, then, we went out, and down by where the undertaker’s is, with the china flowers in the window – you know. There was a crowd, and of course we went to have a squint. And it was two bobbies and our burglar between them, and he was being dragged along; and he said, “I tell you them cats was give me. I got ’em in exchange for me milking a cow in a basement parlour up Camden Town way.”
‘And the people laughed. Beasts! And then one of the policemen said perhaps he could give the name and address of the cow, and he said, no, he couldn’t; but, he could take them there if they’d only leave go of his coat collar, and give him a chance to get his breath. And the policeman said he could tell all that to the magistrate in the morning. He didn’t see us, and so we came away.’
‘Oh, Cyril, how could you?’ said Anthea.
‘Don’t be a pudding-head,’ Cyril advised. ‘A fat lot of good it would have done if we’d let him see us. No one would have believed a word we said. They’d have thought we were kidding. We did better than let him see us. We asked a boy where he lived and he told us, and we went there, and it’s a little greengrocer’s shop, and we bought some Brazil nuts. Here they are.’ The girls waved away the Brazil nuts with loathing and contempt.
‘Well, we had to buy something, and while we were making up our minds what to buy we heard his brother’s missus talking. She said when he came home with all them miaoulers she thought there was more in it than met the eye. But he would go out this morning with the two likeliest of them, one under each arm. She said he sent her out to buy blue ribbon to put round their beastly necks, and she said if he got three months’ hard it was her dying word that he’d got the blue ribbon to thank for it; that, and his own silly thieving ways, taking cats that anybody would know he couldn’t have come by in the way of business, instead of things that wouldn’t have been missed, which Lord knows there are plenty such, and—’
‘Oh, stop!’ cried Jane. And indeed it was time, for Cyril seemed like a clock that had been wound up, and could not help going on. ‘Where is he now?’
‘At the police-station,’ said Robert, for Cyril was out of breath. ‘The boy told us they’d put him in the cells, and would bring him up before the Beak in the morning. I thought it was a jolly lark last night – getting him to take the cats – but now—’
‘The end of a lark,’ said the Phoenix, ‘is the Beak.’
‘Let’s go to him,’ cried both the girls jumping up. ‘Let’s go and tell the truth. They must believe us.’
‘They can’t,’ said Cyril. ‘Just think! If any one came to you with such a tale, you couldn’t believe it, however much you tried. We should only mix things up worse for him.’
‘There must be something we could do,’ said Jane, sniffing very much – ‘my own dear pet burglar! I can’t bear it. And he was so nice, the way he talked about his father, and how he was going to be so extra honest. Dear Phoenix, you must be able to help us. You’re so good and kind and pretty and clever. Do, do tell us what to do.’
The Phoenix rubbed its beak thoughtfully with its claw.
‘You might rescue him,’ it said, ‘and conceal him here, till the law-supporters had forgotten about him.’
‘That would be ages and ages,’ said Cyril, ‘and we couldn’t conceal him here. Father might come home at any moment, and if he found the burglar here he wouldn’t believe the true truth any more than the police would. That’s the worst of the truth. Nobody ever believes it. Couldn’t we take him somewhere else?’
Jane clapped her hands.
‘The sunny southern shore!’ she cried, ‘where the cook is being queen. He and she would be company for each other!’
And really the idea did not seem bad, if only he would consent to go.
So, all talking at once, the children arranged to wait till evening, and then to seek the dear burglar in his lonely cell.
Meantime Jane and Anthea darned away as hard as they could, to make the carpet as strong as possible. For all felt how terrible it would be if the precious burglar, while being carried to the sunny southern shore, were to tumble through a hole in the carpet, and be lost for ever in the sunny southern sea.
The servants were tired after Mrs Wigson’s party, so everyone went to bed early, and when the Phoenix reported that both servants were snoring in a heartfelt and candid manner, the children got up – they had never undressed; just putting their nightgowns on over their things had been enough to deceive Eliza when she came to turn out the gas. So they were ready for anything, and they stood on the carpet and said:
‘I wish we were in our burglar’s lonely cell,’ and instantly they were.
I think everyone had expected the cell to be the ‘deepest dungeon below the castle moat’. I am sure no one had doubted that the burglar, chained by heavy fetters to a ring in the damp stone wall, would be tossing uneasily on a bed of straw, with a pitcher of water and a mouldering crust, un-tasted, beside him. Robert, remembering the underground passage and the treasure, had brought a candle and matches, but these were not needed.
The cell was a little white-washed room about twelve feet long and six feet wide. On one side of it was a sort of shelf sloping a little towards the wall. On this were two rugs, striped blue and yellow, and a water-proof pillow. Rolled in the rugs, and with his head on the pillow, lay the burglar, fast asleep. (He had had his tea, though this the children did not know – it had come from the coffee-shop round the corner, in very thick crockery.) The scene was plainly revealed by the light of a gas-lamp in the passage outside, which