The Borribles, стр. 22

As the two Wendle scouts had indicated, the journey up the rising slope of Replingham was long and tiring. The houses looked uninhabited and bored and there was hardly any adult movement. It was past nine-thirty in the morning and children were at their lessons, their parents at work. This was the first day-time trek of the expedition and the Borribles kept closely together, ready to run, hide or fight. Their eyes flickered nervously to right and left; their catapults were grasped in their hands and stones were loaded ready for firing.

They trudged on upwards towards the lower slopes of Rumbledom, the haversacks becoming heavier with every step they took. Occasionally a door opened in the dead front of a house and a woman shook a doormat or came out to whitestone a step. Sometimes a man scurried by, late for work or on some special errand, and he would turn to look at this strange band of earnest children with haversacks and catapults and woollen hats. But although the man was puzzled, he was too late and too busy to think about the bizarre nature of the sight and he would hurry on.

The steady plodding of their march was interrupted when a car passed them, close to the pavement, and screeched to a halt fifty yards further up the road. A policeman, burly in his blue uniform, leaped from the car and stood in the middle of the pavement with his arms and legs spread wide as if he owned the road, the front gardens, the houses and all the world around him. His face was red and glowing with pleasure.

"Blimey! A Woollie in a nondescript," said Bingo, who knew a lot of police terminolgoy because he lived in a nick. "There'll be another one behind us."

Glancing over their shoulders the Borribles saw another car parked a hundred yards behind them and a second brawny policeman was getting out of it, a grin on his face.

"Verdammt," swore Adolf, "we'd better get out of here."

To their left opened one of the turnings that led from Replingham; it was called Engadine and the Borribles were never to forget the name. Slowly, stretching their catapult rubbers, the Adventurers backed into it. As soon as they were round the corner they took to their heels and put on a burst of speed for twenty or thirty yards.

"Bingo," shouted Knocker, "you know the Woollies, you'd better take charge."

The two policemen appeared on the corner and stood together for a moment looking along the street at the Borribles. They waved the first car back to them, the other flashed on up the hill.

Bingo said, "That second nondescript will have gone round the block to seal off the other end of the road. I think those Woollies know we're Borribles and not just normal. We're going to have to fight this one, and even then there's a good chance of getting caught."

"Oh, I'm glad this has happened," grinned Stonks, flexing the elastic on his catapult." Walking gets boring on its own."

"Right," said Bingo, "here they come. Pretend to run away; spread across the road. When I give the word, turn and fire. I'll be in the middle. Those of you on my left take the copper on the left, those on the right the copper on the right. Aim for their knees."

The Borribles, pretending to look very frightened, backed away from the advancing policemen, slowly at first, then more quickly until they were running as hard as they could, which was very fast. The policemen put a lot into their running and were gaining when Bingo called out at the top of his voice, "A Borrible!" and the Adventurers turned, springing into the air and landing with their catapults stretched. They fired and both policemen fell as if their legs had been scythed from underneath them. Five stones arriving with the force of bullets all at once on the knee-caps can be as effective as amputation when it comes to running.

The police driver, at the near end of the street, had been watching the battle from the open window of his car, but when he saw his two colleagues rolling about on the ground and clasping their knees in pain he shoved his motor into gear and charged it down the middle of Engadine to come to their rescue.

Chalotte ran nimbly to the cover of a front garden. As the car came by, she let it have a stone, glancing along the bonnet. It was beautifully done; the windscreen became veined suddenly with a million lines of cold silver and the driver could see nothing. He was driving too fast and he swerved to be sure of avoiding his crippled friends who still lay in the road. The car, completely out of control, bounced across the pavement narrowly missing Stonks and sending Adolf spinning into the gutter. There was a sound of tearing metal and shattering glass as the car buried its nose in the brick coping that protected one of the house-fronts. The driver, who had earlier, and unwisely, unfastened his seat-belt, went through the frail windscreen like a locomotive and concussed himself on what was left of the wall.

"Yippee," yelled Bingo and, "Yippee," yelled the others, but Vulge called a warning. "He's on the walkie-talkie. There'll be hundreds up here if we don't watch out."

Sure enough, one of the lamed policemen had pulled out his pocket transmitter and was about to speak into it.

Perhaps the quickest loader and firer of the team was Chalotte. A stone had flown from her catapult almost before Vulge had finished shouting. It smashed into the hand radio and knocked it to the ground, broken and useless.

"We'll have to get out of here quick," said Bingo, looking down to the far end of the street. "The other car will be coming round this way soon."

"I don't mind staying here and taking them on," said Torreycanyon. "I enjoyed that. I hope the Rumbles fall over as easily."

"There'll be thousands and thousands of Rumbles," said Orococco, "and they'll keep coming at us like they was starving and we was their favourite cereal."

"We need somewhere to hide," said Sydney sensibly. "The roads will be crawling with John Law in ten minutes' time."

The group went silent. What Sydney had said was true, but where could they hide? All the houses in Engadine looked inhabited and the police would soon be knocking at every door asking if the Borribles had been seen.

It was then that their luck changed.

They were standing on the pavement near the wrecked car, watching the injured policemen crawl away, when at their feet they heard a slight noise, a grating, scratching noise. They half-turned and looked at the metal coal-hole cover that was set into the pavement just behind them; it moved. They glanced along the street. Every house they could see had a similar cover in front of it, circular and made from heavy iron. They were useful these covers, for the local coalmen could lift them out of the way and empty their heavy hundredweight sacks into them and so deliver their coal into the cellars without tramping all their dirt and dust through the houses—but this cover was revolving, on its own.

"Aye, aye," said Vulge, "what's this then, under-cover coppers?"

Suddenly the coal-hole cover lifted an inch, balanced on a human head. It hesitated, then up it came another inch, warily. After a second more it tilted to one side and a nose appeared. It was a large nose and crooked, with coal dust on it as well as a heavy dewdrop which looked as if it might leave the nose at any moment, but which didn't.

Vulge bent down quickly. "What's your game, sunshine, eh?"

A voice came out of the hole; it was cracked and petulant but the words it used were friendly enough. "Borribles, ain't yer? He, he, only Borribles could do that to the Woollies. I was watching from my front room. I'm a good friend to the Borribles, always have been. They help me and I help them. Was one myself once, ain't it, till I got caught. Nasty business growing old. You don't ever want to get caught, do you?"

Vulge looked over his shoulder at the others."I don't know what we've got here," he said, "but he might be able to get us out of this pickle."

"We'd better hurry," said Bingo." I can see the other car at the far end of the road, getting ready."

"You come down here, mateys," said the voice from the coal-hole and the dewdrop quivered ecstatically, threatening to lose its passionate hold on the nose. "You come down here, ain't it? I won't tell where you are, and in a couple of days you can carry on to where-ever you're going."

"We haven't got a lot of choice," said Torreycanyon. "None of us wants to get caught, at least not before we gets to Rumbeldom and does what we came to do."

"Okay down there," called Vulge. "Move over, we're coming in." He pushed the coal-hole cover till it slid over to rest on the pavement and he saw a narrow head, covered with a wisp of grey hair, duck back into the darkness.

"Well," asked Vulge, "who's first?"

"Man, if we stands round here nattering all day, we'll spend tonight in the nick with our ears clipped," said Orococco. "I ain't scared of the dark," and he struggled out of his haversack, threw it into the hole and then wriggled through the narrow opening.

The others followed quickly one by one until Knocker was left alone. He looked about him. The car-driver was still unconscious and the two injured policemen had crawled into Replingham out of sight. The street was empty and no one had seen the disappearance of the Borrible Adventurers. The whole battle had taken no longer than two or three minutes and the crash had not yet attracted attention. However, at the far end of Engadine, Knocker could see the other police car in position. It was still too far away to see what had happened, but shortly those policemen would be driving this way. He must get underground.

Knocker lowered himself downwards through the pavement until his feet touched a shifting pile of coal. The light from above got smaller and smaller as he pulled the iron lid into its grooves. There was a clang like the top half of a sepulchre slotting into place and Knocker and the other nine Adventurers were in complete darkness, safe below the long stretches of Engadine in South-West Eighteen.

Knocker slipped and slithered on the heap of coal. He stumbled, regained his balance for a moment, then fell forward. He was caught and the breath was crushed out of him by two wiry adult arms. He struggled but the arms were too strong. He kicked and squirmed but he couldn't free himself. Hot breath scalded his face as his assailant carried him along; the breath was foul and heavy and Knocker twisted away from it.