The secret passages turned out to have a lot of doors and peepholes. The narrow corridors felt a lot safer than the old room had. He shuddered, turned and put his finger to his lips, and then put his eye back to the hole.
He saw a really big room again; but then, most of the rooms were. This one had windows open, and he spared them a longing look. There was a long table set for a meal with fancy metal tableware, not wood and crockery, not even pewter, but real silver. An old-looking man was sitting at the head of the table, talking to two other men who stood with their caps in their hands.
Rip’s lips pursed. Those were the men who’d taken him and brought him here. He could tell by their voices. They looked cruel, and scary, too. A third man sat with his back to the hole, silent.
‘Take this,’ he said, pushing something across the table at them.
One of the men reached out, then pulled his hand back as if the little thing had burned it. ‘Magic!’ he blurted.
‘Of course it’s magic, you fool,’ the old man said. ‘The needle points at the man you are to take for me.’
The other seated man spoke, his voice smooth and soothing and somehow reminding Rip of the stuff his mother sometimes smeared on burns, or when you got stung by poison-oak or nettles. ‘It’s entirely harmless, I assure you,’ he said. ‘You need merely follow the needle’s point. It may lead you on a long chase—the man in question may be as much as fifty miles away—but it shouldn’t be too difficult.’
‘And the pay is good,’ the older man snapped. ‘More than for all the others.’
One of the standing men nudged his companion; he picked up the small thing from the table reluctantly and wrapped it in a rag, tucking it into his belt.
‘It’s a man this time?’ he asked. ‘Not a boy?’
‘He should be just seventeen,’ the old man said, turning his head aside. For a moment Rip saw how sad he looked, and felt a little sorry for him. His voice sank, so that the boy could barely follow it. ‘Just seventeen . . . he should be tall, perhaps fair-haired, perhaps brown.’
‘We’re yer men,’ the standing man said. ‘For six hundred, we’re yer hands and fingers, m’lord.’
‘And when you bring him in, put a bag over his head. I have no wish to see his face. None!’
‘Then how’ll ye know it’s ‘im, sir?’
The smooth-talking man said, ‘That needle will only point at one person in this entire world. That is who you will bring here. Now go!’
They both bowed low; after a moment the old man and his companion followed them, talking.
‘Oh, good,’ Rip whispered, and opened the door a crack. It was set into the panelling, and even Mandy would have to stoop to get out of it. ‘All right—come on—they’re all gone!’
The four children scampered out into the room. Rip almost stopped as he felt them again, the bad ones, but he was hungry. Mandy and Neesa ran straight to the table and began to gather food up in handkerchiefs; bread, cooked chicken, pastries stuffed with vegetables. Rip and Kay didn’t stop for that, although it smelled very good; instead they raced over to the door.
They cracked the door and peered through, waiting while the girls grabbed up as much food as they could carry. Rip wanted to stick his head out into the hall, but resisted the urge.
Kay grabbed his arm. ‘I can feel something coming,’ he whispered.
‘Me too,’ Rip said. He had a sick feeling in his stomach, as he had in the room they’d been locked up in; and it was getting worse.
Without a word, they stuffed the candles back in their pockets and bolted for the secret door; the girls were already through, eyes wide, and all of them gave a sigh of relief as the panel clicked closed.
Immediately they all felt better too; the sense of peering malice went away as if the stuffy darkness of the secret passage was part of another world.
I wonder why it’s always like this when we come out of the passageways? Rip thought.
Then Mandy started unfolding one of the napkins. ‘What did you get?’ he asked eagerly as they started their trek back to their safe room.
FOURTEEN - Abduction
Jimmy reined in.
He’d followed Jarvis Coe all the way around the lands belonging to the great house they’d seen, from sea-cliff edge to sea-cliff edge, a long ride in a rising wind that reminded you with every step that spring was young.
A long trip and an unpleasant one. The only way to find out if they’d gone beyond that skin-crawling feeling was by testing; one step in—run away!—one step back—perfectly normal.
‘What is it?’ Jimmy asked, struggling to keep his old nag from bolting like a racehorse.
‘Nothing good,’ Coe answered.
Jimmy snorted. Brilliant! How fortunate that he had someone along to tell him that. The awful feeling seemed to have no end. He certainly wasn’t going to try climbing up the cliff face to see if the way to the manse was clear from that direction because it probably wasn’t. He’d long ago learned not to squander his energy.
‘Ever felt anything like it before?’ he asked.
Coe turned to look at him. ‘Ever been in a haunted house?’