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JENNINGS AGAIN !

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Anthony Buckeridge

JENNINGS AGAIN !

OUVRAGE NON TRADUIT EN FRANÇAIS

VERSION ORIGINALE

MACMILLAN

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CHILDREN’BOKS1991

Anthony Buckeridge

JENNINGS AGAIN

Fossilised fish-hooks, it's JENNINGS AGAIN! in the first new Jennings book for fourteen years!

The stories of the exploits of Jennings, and his friend Darbishire, are some of the funniest ever written about life in a boarding school - and here is a brand new one.

Linbury Court School has not changed: the headmaster, Mr Pemberton-Oakes, is still putting his foot firmly down - this time on the question of litter and the conservation of the earth's precious resources.

Staff and boys join the "Keep Linbury Green" campaign and Jennings and Darbishire take on the job of distributing leaflets. It was Darbishire's emergency repair of his shoe with an elastic band which slowed him down to the point that Jennings said that he could go faster on a wheel-clamped skateboard. And if it hadn't been for the elastic band the accident with the leaflets might never have happened, and Mr Wilkins ("a large man with a powerful voice and a limited supply of patience" who is also Jennings' form master) wouldn't have got all the blame.

But, as always, Jennings and Darbishire are doing their best: it's not their fault that Jennings' wheezes so often land them in trouble.

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The book is a treat for all fans of Jennings -and for those meeting him for the first time.

Anthony Buckeridge writes, "I was teaching in a prep school after the war and writing radio plays in my spare time. I gave up teaching when I realised that I had commissions to write that would keep me busy for two years and I have written full time ever since. I also act, chiefly on radio, and I have played small parts at Glyndebourne Opera during the season."

There are twenty-four 'Jennings' books, and world-wide sales are now in excess of five million copies. They have been translated into twelve languages. The stories began as radio plays on Children's Hour in 1948 and there have also been two television productions.

What the press has said:"Jennings is great!" The Times

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"Jennings is great!" The Sun"Magic . . . hilarious." Daily Mirror"The hilarious Jennings books." Daily Mail

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For Eric Rosebery

Text copyright © Anthony Buckeridge 1991 Illustrations copyright © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 1991

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, without permission.

The right of Anthony Buckeridge to be identified as author of this work has beenasserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Illustrations by Rodney Sutton

First published 1991 byMACMILLAN CHILDREN'S BOOKS

A division of Pan Macmillan Children's BooksLondon and Basingstoke Associated companies throughout the world

ISBN 0-333-54818-3A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library

Printed by WBC Print Ltd, Bridgend

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AUTHOR'S NOTE

Each of the Jennings books is a story complete in itself. Apart from the first title, Jennings Goes to School, the books can be read in any order.

Anthony Buckeridge

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE I. THE AIM OF THE GAME 12

II. GLOBAL FOOTBALL 25III. Miss THORPE GOES GREEN 39IV. MARINA GARDENS GETS THE MESSAGE 51 V. THE TEA-POT TROPHY 65

VI. THE MISER'S MATTRESS 78VII. THE NIGGLING DOUBT 93

VIII. OUT OF BOUNDS 104

IX. FACING THE CAMERA 116

X. LOST IN TRANSIT 125

XI. UNDERGROUND 135

XII. THE MAPLE TREE 146

XIII. PHOTO FINISH 158

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ILLUSTRATIONS

"Jennings!" he shouted with the 37full force of his lungs.

The scalding liquid splashed down 69on to the back of Jennings' hand.

Darbishire sniffed, wrinkled his nose 83and poked the offending bedding with a stick.

Jennings stood stock still, his heart pounding. 111

"Jennings!" Mr Wilkins shouted joyfully. 144 "Thank goodness you're safe, boy."

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CHAPTER 1

THE AIM OF THE GAME

It is no wonder that Mr Pemberton-Oakes, headmaster of Linbury Court School, put his foot down firmly on the subject of Space Invaders and did his best to turn the attention of his boys to the more sensible topic of caring for the real world in which they lived.

The matter came to a head one afternoon in October when the pitches were too wet for football and the boys were cooped up indoors. Strolling round the school grounds during a lull between the rain showers, Mr Pemberton-Oakes was horrified to discover sweet wrappers, empty crisp packets and discarded drink cartons blown by the wind into the long grass bordering the playing-field.

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The headmaster held strong views about tidiness. This strewing of rubbish about the grounds was no way to treat the Earth's precious store of raw materials when people the world over were concerned with cutting down waste and protecting the atmosphere from poisonous chemicals.

True, this failure to keep the school grounds free oflitter was far removed from global disasters

threatened by acid rain, the destruction of forests and the pollution of rivers and oceans. Nor, by themselves, could the boys do much to prevent damage to the ozone layer or stem the tide of the threatened "greenhouse effect". But, at least, they could do their best to ensure that their own little patch of the environment was kept in good shape.

He would talk to the boys about this in Assembly tomorrow morning, he thought. A project based on ecology would be a better way of spending their free time than this ridiculous nonsense about aliens from Outer Space (inspired by computer games) which had become so popular during the past few weeks.

However, despite the headmaster's views on the subject, the popularity of this pastime was showing no sign of abating, judging by the enthusiasm for yet another game of make-believe which, at that moment, was taking shape in the corridor outside Form Three classroom.

As usual, the organiser was Jennings, a lively eleven-year-old whose plans to brighten up the routine of boarding-school life so often ended in disaster.

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"Darbishire and I and some of you lot can be little green men from Mars," he announced to a group of third-formers anxious to dispel the boredom of a wet Tuesday afternoon. "You other lot can be patriotic Earthmen who've got to capture us before we hold the Earth to ransom."

"Has it got to be Mars?" complained Darbishire, a fair-haired, bespectacled boy whose close friendship with Jennings led him into situations from which his cautious nature shrank in alarm. "It's always Mars when you're making up the rules. Couldn't we come from somewhere else for a change?"

"Please yourself. How about Jupiter or Venus, then?"

Darbishire took off his glasses and wiped the grime from the lenses with his dirty handkerchief. "I'd rather come from Planet X," he said.

"Planet X? Where's that?""Nobody really knows," Darbishire explained.

"Astronomers and those sort of people are pretty sure it's about somewhere, but it's so far away they can't quite make out where it is."

"Fair enough," said Venables, an untidy boy with untucked shirt and trailing shoelaces. "You could pre-tend you've got superhuman intelligence and you've come all the way from Planet X to tell the astronomer-geezers where to look."

Atkinson giggled. "Super-human intelligence! Darbishire!"

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Darbishire ignored the insult. "And we could say we've come all this way to bring peace and goodwill and all that flannel, and show people how to stop the Earth getting too hot."

This didn't satisfy the burly, square-rigged Temple.

"That's crazy. Planet-dwellers are always evil enemy aliens. They're not supposed to be friendly."

Jennings, as organiser, settled the argument. "We'll do it both ways. First, you think we've come to destroy the world so you have to take us prisoner. Then, just as you're going to wipe us out with your laser beams, we turn round and tell you how to bung up the hole in the ozone layer."

"OK," Darbishire agreed. "So by the end of the game we all finish up being Mr Nice Guys."

That settled, Jennings divided the players into Planet-dwellers and Earthmen.

"We'll split up alphabetically," he announced. "All blokes whose names start with A to M are Planet X-ers. If you're an N to Z you're an Earthman."

For the next twenty minutes the corridors echoed to the clatter of juvenile footwear and the squawking of juvenile vocal cords as defenders and attackers chased one another round the building.

The rules of the game were simple and the basic aim was clear: the ground floor was Earth, the upper storeys Outer Space. On their home ground the attackers were free from arrest, but once they set foot on Earth

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they were at the mercy of any defender nimble enough to catch them or wily enough to lure them into some crafty ambush.

For, as well as avoiding arrest, the spacemen's task was to seize and make off with the geographical globe,

normally kept in Form Three classroom. The globe,

slightly larger than a football, was marked with lines of latitude and longitude and showed the physical features of the world in various colours. Whichever side held this trophy in its possession held the world in its power. It was, perhaps, a somewhat fanciful idea, but good enough to fire the imagination of both defenders and attackers.

Darbishire crouched behind a laundry basket on the first-floor landing, peering down through the banisters at the open door of Form Three classroom on the floor below. In his imagination he was circling the Earth in his spaceship looking for a suitable place to land. He had just arrived from Planet X in the outer reaches of the galaxy. Here on the landing he was safe. The Earthmen couldn't reach him high up beyond the ozone layer.

And what should his mission be when he landed on Earth? H'm! Let's think, now . . . !

He would be a creature of fantastic intelligence, he told himself, who had come to teach the top scientists of the world, who would listen, open-mouthed and goggle-eyed with wonder, as he explained in simple language the mysteries of the universe.

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"Don't blame yourselves if you find it hard to understand," he would tell the astronomers and the professors of astrophysics in his opening lecture. "We on Planet X have developed our brain power to a far

greater degree than you human beings are capable of. In fact, we can even—"

The lecture was cut short by Jennings racing along the landing and skidding to a halt beside the laundry basket.

"Hey, Darbi, we can capture the trophy if we go right away," he said. "Venables has just gone rushing off after Bromwich and Martin-Jones and there's only Rumbelow left on guard. If we can get rid of him, we'll be laughing."

Jennings' plan seemed feasible. The globe was clearly visible through the open classroom door. It would be the work of only a few moments to slide down the banisters, dart into the classroom, grab the trophy and rush back upstairs to the safety of the first-floor landing.

"But how can we go downstairs with Rumbelow on the look-out?" Darbishire demurred. "He's only got to slap you on the shoulder and you're his prisoner."

"We'll create a diversion," Jennings explained. "I'll go first and make a noise so he sees me. I'll be a sort of decoy duck to lead him astray. Then I'll belt off to the changing-room and he'll come rushing after me. That's

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when you slip into the classroom like greased lightning and grab the globe."

Darbishire didn't think much of his part in the plan. He disliked all forms of violent activity and was much happier in his role of the super-intelligent

being, revealing the secrets of the universe to the astronomers and physicists with their sadly limited human brain-power.

"It's all very well to say slip in and grab it, but it's on that shelf by the window and I can't reach it without a chair or something to stand on. Supposing Venables comes back while I'm still trying to get it down. Supposing—"

"Oh, for goodness sake!" stormed Jennings. "You're about as much use as an oil-fired gumboot. You'll just have to be quick, that's all."

"Can't we do it the other way round? I'll be the decoy duck, or whatever you call it, and you can pinch the globe. Anyway, you're taller than me so you ought to be able to reach it without standing on a chair."

This might well be the better plan, Jennings reasoned. Darbishire was his best friend and a loyal follower, but Jennings had to admit that he was pretty useless as a man of action. Of all the many exploits in and out of school in which the pair had been involved, it was always Jennings who took the initiative and Darbishire who followed behind, doing his best to restrain his leader from the disastrous results of his actions.

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"OK, then. You be the decoy duck and I'll follow as soon as you and Rumbelow are out of sight." Even if Darbishire was captured, he wouldn't be much loss to his side, Jennings thought.

With great caution Darbishire tiptoed down the stairs to the hall. Rumbelow, though close at hand, was looking the other way and didn't see him.

"Ahem, ahem!" said the decoy duck and flapped his arms.

The guard turned and saw him and gave chase.Darbishire was no athlete and despite a ten-yard

start was soon losing ground as Rumbelow pounded along in his wake. The capture took place outside the boot-room in the basement, after which Darbishire was escorted to the prisoners' bench in the changing-room where other captives were waiting until the end of the game, or until, by some lucky chance, they were rescued by one of their own side.

Bromwich and Martin-Jones, captured by Venables and now guarded by Pettigrew, were already seated when Darbishire was ushered in.

"Bad luck, Darbi," Bromwich greeted him. "What happened?"

"I was a decoy duck," said Darbishire. "I volunteered to invade enemy territory alone and unaided, with no hope of rescue if the worst came to the worst." He smiled modestly. "It was what you might call a heroic sacrifice in a hopeless cause."

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His fellow-prisoners winked at each other and grinned. Nobody had much faith in Darbishire as a hero of daring exploits.

The self-styled hero took his place on the bench. He

was secretly glad he had been captured, for now he was safely out of the way of the hurly-burly of the chase and could again resume his daydream of being the bulging-browed genius of his imagination.

"And so, ladies and gentlemen," he went on to the imaginary scientists thronging the non-existent lecture hall, "and so, when we discovered your existence, we thought we'd pop down and explain these problems about particle physics that were giving you so much trouble."

His lips moved silently as the lecture continued in his mind.

There was no time to lose. No sooner had Rumbelow set foot along the corridor in pursuit of Darbishire than Jennings slid down the banisters and scurried into Form Three classroom.

The globe on the shelf by the window was, after all, within easy reach, despite Darbishire's doubts. Jennings lifted it down and set it on a desk. He noticed that the model was attached to its pedestal by a spindle running through the globe from the North Pole to the South. A touch of the finger set it spinning on its axis. He had never examined it closely before, but now he found that

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the sphere could be lifted off its pedestal by raising it up clear of its spindle.

This he did, and stood for a moment clutching in his arms the hollow, balloon-like object (made of plastic

and not metal, as he had supposed), resembling in size and texture a large, though under-inflated, football.

He'd got the trophy; he didn't need the pedestal, so he rushed from the room like a goal-keeper with the ball safely in his hands.

At the door, he saw Temple coming along the corri-dor towards him and cutting off his escape route up the stairs. He swivelled round and set off in the opposite direction with Temple just a few yards behind. Reach-ing the side door leading to the playground, he shot through and slammed it just as Temple was stretching out his hand to capture his quarry.

To Jennings' surprise, there was no sign of pursuit. Temple, having grazed his knuckles badly on the door handle, was now hobbling back along the corridor in a doubled-up posture with pursed lips, nursing his injured knuckles between his knees.

The rain showers had ceased and given way to fitful sunshine as Jennings ran across the playground, won-dering what to do next. He had still to get the trophy safely upstairs to the first-floor landing before he could claim victory.

On the far side of the playground he could see the headmaster reversing his car out of the garage. Jennings

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stuffed the globe up his sweater and turned away, as though admiring the scenery. He was anxious to avoid any awkward questions about the tell-tale bulge of his stomach, but the headmaster appeared

not to notice as the car swept down the drive to the main gate.

He would try to creep back into the building through the boot-room window in the basement, he decided, approaching it by a roundabout route. With this in mind, he left the playground and set off towards the junior football pitch, but his luck was out. As he drew level with the sports pavilion, Venables leaped out from behind the cricket scoring-box where he had been lying in wait.

They met face to face: there was no chance of escape.

"Got you! You're under arrest," Venables shouted and clapped him on the shoulder.

Jennings shrugged. "How did you know where I was?"

"Temple came back and told me you'd gone out through the side door, so I followed. I was crafty. I shadowed you. I saw you shove the trophy up your jersey when the Head went past." Venables held out his hand. "Pass it over. It belongs to us again now."

The bulge disappeared from beneath Jennings' sweater as the globe landed on the grass, bounced a few inches and rolled to rest.

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Strictly speaking, Venables should then have marched Jennings back to the changing-room and placed him on the prisoners' bench in the charge of Rumbelow. But this would have wasted valuable time, and

Venables was keen to finish rounding up the rest of the enemy aliens.

According to the rules, a prisoner could not break free so long as his captor was standing guard over him, but was entitled to escape if at any time he was not under supervision.

Venables had foreseen this possibility and had come prepared. From his pocket he produced the padlock and chain used for securing his bicycle. He looked round for a suitable place to tether his prisoner and decided to chain him to a garden roller standing beside the scoring-box.

"Hey, you're not going to leave me stranded out here!" Jennings objected.

His captor smiled and twisted the chain round the iron frame connecting the roller's axle to its handle. He wound the rest of the chain round his prisoner's wrist and secured the makeshift handcuffs with his padlock.

"That'll keep you out of mischief for a bit," he said, as the padlock clicked shut.

"Yes, I know, but how long have I got to be stuck out here?"

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"Only till the end of the game. Now we've got the trophy back it should be all over in about ten minutes. I'll come back and set you free then. Honestly!"

"Supposing it rains? I shall get soaked.""It won't rain. I'll give you my personal guarantee.

Anyway, it's all your own fault for going out of doors. You're supposed to stay in the building, by rights."

"Yes, but what if ... ?"But Venables wasn't listening. He picked up the

globe and trotted back towards the side door. As he went, it occurred to him (as it had occurred to Jennings a few minutes earlier) that in other circumstances the plastic sphere would have made a useful football. A bit large, perhaps, and a little on the soft side, but a passable substitute. He tossed it into the air, heading and catching it as he went along. And when, after several headings and catches, he lost control and it landed in a puddle at his feet, he dribbled it along the path.

Most of the way he controlled the ball with reason-able skill, but from time to time it got away from his dribbling feet and veered off into a flower-bed.

Soon the globe was looking the worse for wear. Streaks of mud obscured the continent of Australia, wet footmarks were visible across most of Europe, and much of Antarctica was obscured by the slime and wet soil of a drainage ditch.

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He was approaching the side door just as it was opened from within and Mr Wilkins, his form master, came out to enjoy a breath of fresh air before afternoon school.

CHAPTER 2

GLOBAL FOOTBALL

Mr Wilkins was a large man with a powerful voice and a limited supply of patience. Though fond of the boys whom he taught, he looked upon most of their activities with suspicion, for he could never understand the way in which their minds appeared to work.

Here was a case in point. Never in his wildest dreams had Mr Wilkins felt an urge to dismantle an expensive globe of the world and play football with it. That being so, he couldn't see why anybody in his right mind should give in to this baffling temptation.

Furthermore, Mr Wilkins' supply of goodwill was at a low ebb owing to the events of the earlier part of the afternoon.

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It had been too wet for football, and by the time the rain had stopped it was too late to send the boys out for a walk before afternoon school at four o'clock. Seventy-nine boys cooped up indoors on a wet afternoon can generate a considerable amount of energy. Not, perhaps, enough to raise the roof of the building, but sufficient to set it vibrating on its foundations.

To his surprise, however, Mr Wilkins had, at first, found no sign of these roof-raising activities as he walked round the school on his tour of duty. Rather the reverse! He had been pleased to note the quiet games of chess and the subdued murmur of the aircraft model-makers. He had had no fault to find with the readers poring over their books in the library or the muffled ping and pong of ball on bat as the table-tennis players faced each other across the net in the games room.

But it was too good to last, and by three o'clock the peace of the afternoon was being shattered by a group of boys rampaging round the premises pretending to be Planet-dwellers and Earthmen.

It was then that Mr Wilkins' store of patience began to buckle at the edges. Outside the library, he had been obliged to side-step smartly to avoid being run down by Pettigrew chasing Blotwell. Moments later, he was threatening punishments on all sides to Planet-dwellers and Earthmen alike for blasting his ear-drums by shouting at one another at the tops of their penetrating voices.

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Arriving at the open door of Form Three classroom, he glanced in and noticed the discarded pedestal of the globe on a desk in the front row. There seemed no obvious reason for this. However, he was not prepared to spend time pursuing the matter. No doubt he would solve the mystery in due course.

As it happened, Mr Wilkins solved the mystery some

thirty seconds later when he opened the side door on to the playground and saw Venables bouncing the globe up and down like a goal-keeper about to take a clearance kick.

For a moment the master had been dumbstruck with disbelief at this mind-boggling behaviour. When his mind had ceased to boggle and the power of speech returned, he shouted, "Venables! What in the name of thunder are you playing at?"

The culprit gave.a guilty start. "Nothing, sir," he stammered. "Well, nothing much, really. I was just coming indoors to get ready for school."

"Never mind getting ready for school. What are you doing with the globe?"

"The globe?" Venables assumed a puzzled frown as though unaware until that moment that his hands held anything worthy of remark. Playing for time, he said, "Do you mean this globe, sir?"

"Of course I mean that globe, you silly little boy. You don't imagine I'm talking about a hot-air balloon, do you?"

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"No, sir. Well, I was just taking it back to our class-room ready for your geography lesson, sir. I thought I'd put it back on its stand so it'd be all ready for you when you came in."

"Yes, yes, yes, but what did you want to take it off its stand for in the first place?"

"I didn't, sir."

"I suppose you're going to tell me that it shot off its spindle of its own accord and bounced itself out through the side door on to the playground."

It was clear that Mr Wilkins was in no mood to be put off with feeble excuses.

"I just meant it wasn't me who took it out - some-body else did," Venables explained. "You see, we were playing this game about invaders from Planet X. Only instead of being enemies, they'd really come to show us—"

"Doh! Space Invaders! I might have known." Mr Wilkins almost danced with exasperation and his mind began to boggle again. "I've had enough of this stupid nonsense. How you could have the audacity to remove an expensive item of school equipment from the class-room is beyond me to understand. And as if that wasn't enough, you take it outside and play football with it!"

"I wasn't actually playing football, sir," Venables defended himself. "Not properly kicking it, or anything. Just a bit of dribbling and heading practice, that's all."

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"Don't try to make excuses, boy. I've never heard of such wanton vandalism. That globe is a delicate, scientific teaching-aid, I'd have you know. You might just as well have been practising taking corners and penalty shots considering the damage you've done. Look at the state it's in!"

Venables took out his handkerchief and wiped a few

smears of mud from the Atlantic Ocean. With his finger he flicked a wet leaf and a small worm-cast from the coastline of Canada. He couldn't see that he'd done much damage; the globe looked as tough as a proper football, so it wouldn't have come to much harm even if he had practised taking a few corners, he thought.

But Mr Wilkins couldn't be expected to accept this reasonable way of looking at it. He took the globe from Venables, taking care to hold the mud-stained object well away from his jacket. "I shall get the headmaster to deal with this. I can just imagine what he'll have to say about this deliberate destruction of valuable school property. Go and report to him at once."

Venables remembered seeing the car going down the drive. "But supposing he isn't there, sir?"

"Wait till he comes back, then. It'll do you no harm to cool your heels outside his study until he's ready to deal with you."

"Yes, sir."

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The thought of Jennings chained to the roller flick-ered into Venables' mind. "Oh, but sir, I can't go yet. I've just thought of something."

"What d'you mean, can't go? I've just told you to go."

"Yes, I know, only there's something I've got to do first. It won't take a minute, honestly, sir."

"You'll do nothing of the sort," Mr Wilkins retorted,

angry that his orders should be questioned. "Go and report yourself this minute."

"Oh, but, sir—""Don't argue with me, boy. You heard what I said."

He gestured towards the side door. "In you go! Sharpish, now! Tell the headmaster what you did, and don't you dare come back into school until he's dealt with you."

Venables sighed and made his way indoors. He was sorry about Jennings, of course, but there was nothing he could do about it. Old Jen would have to cope by himself. He'd manage somehow. He was used to getting out of tight corners.

For some minutes after Venables had left him, Jennings stood tethered to the roller in a state of resigned boredom. He wasn't worried: the game would soon be over and his captor would be back to release

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him in time for afternoon school ... But time went by and nothing happened.

Then the drizzle started again in spite of Venables' personal guarantee that it wouldn't. If only he could get away! He tried to squeeze his hand free from the bond round his wrist, but it was too tight and he only succeeded in grazing his knuckles on the chain.

Soon he became alarmed. The game must be over by now! Then alarm turned to panic as he heard the

distant sound of the bell for school ringing from inside the building.

What should he do? There was only one answer. If he couldn't escape from the roller, he would have to take it with him. It wasn't too heavy to push, for he had often used it in the summer term for smoothing out the bumps on the junior tennis court. But that was when the grass was short and dry and the ground was level. Now he would have to push it uphill over a soft, wet, slippery surface of bumpy ground.

Leaning with all his might on the handle, he pushed the roller away from the scoring-box onto the path. So far, so good! But facing him was a stretch of squelchy turf and an upward slope. And beyond that a grassy bank that he couldn't get up, however hard he pushed.

He would have to make a wide detour across the junior football pitches where the going would be easier,

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and approach the building by a roundabout route. And he'd be late for school.

Venables was a treacherous traitor! A low, cunning, double-crossing trickster, Jennings decided. "Just wait till I get my hands on him," he fumed as he gasped and strained to push the roller up a ridge of rising ground. It was unheard of to leave an opponent tied up after the game was over. What on earth was Venables thinking of?

What Venables was actually thinking of at that

moment was what to do next. Should he go on waiting outside the headmaster's study, now that the bell had gone, or should he go into class?

Receiving no answer to his knock, he had been obediently cooling his heels for what seemed quite a long time. He hadn't forgotten about Jennings. Perhaps there would be just enough time to rush outside and release him before the headmaster returned.

With this in mind, he hurried off along the corridor, only to come face to face with Mr Carter, the senior master, proceeding in the opposite direction.

"Where are you going, Venables?" he asked.Unlike Mr Wilkins, Mr Carter was liked and

respected by the boys of Linbury Court. He was a friendly, middle-aged man who usually looked upon the antics of the rising generation with a tolerant eye. Usually, but not always!

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"I'm not really going anywhere, sir," Venables replied. "At least, nowhere important."

"Then why aren't you in class?"Venables considered. To reveal that he had left

Jennings chained to a garden roller would not help matters.

"Well, Mr Wilkins told me to report to the Head for - er - for something that had happened, but as he's not there I thought, perhaps, I ought to go into class instead."

"Then why are you hurrying in the opposite direc-tion? Have you forgotten the way, or were you blown off-course by powerful head-winds? In any case," Mr Carter went on, "you'd better wait until the Head comes back. He's only gone to the village, so he shouldn't be long."

Venables returned to his lonely wait outside the study. He'd done his best for Jennings at some risk to himself. He couldn't be expected to do any more.

Mr Wilkins strode briskly into Form Three classroom where his form were waiting for him to start the geography lesson.

"All sit up straight and keep your wits about you," he boomed. "This afternoon we're going to have a look at what's been happening in the rain forests of the world."

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He ran his eye round the room. Two desks were unoccupied. "Where's Jennings?" he demanded.

Nobody knew."Shall I go and look for him, sir?" volunteered

Atkinson, hoping to delay the start of the lesson."No," said Mr Wilkins, shortly."Venables isn't here either, sir," Temple reported."I know all about Venables," said Mr Wilkins. "The

stupid boy will have something to answer for when the headmaster gets back. And /'// have something to say to Master Jennings when he condescends to turn up for

my lesson." He placed a pile of press-cuttings which he had collected on the master's desk, cleared his throat and continued.

"The destruction of forests in many parts of the world has become a serious problem. In times past, however, it was not only tropical countries that were thickly covered by forests. Indeed, at one time our own country was so densely packed with trees that it is claimed that a squirrel could have made its way from what we now call Sherwood Forest to Land's End without having to set foot upon the ground.

"Today, however, we tend to think of countries such as South America and Indonesia where the destruction of vast wooded areas has reached alarming proportions ..."

The lesson continued and Form Three listened with close attention. Except for Darbishire, whose one-track

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mind was still brooding over the tree-top journey of the wandering squirrel.

Why did it want to leave Sherwood Forest? he won-dered. Were the nuts better in Cornwall? And how did it know which way to go? If it took a wrong turning, it might end up at Beachy Head instead of Land's End. And in spite of all the trees, it would have to make some fantastic jumps over rivers and things. Unless it floated downstream on a log. You couldn't really call that touching the ground, could you? It was rather like the game they sometimes played after lights out- trying

to go round the dormitory without putting your foot on the floor. It wasn't too difficult, apart from that gap between the wash-basins and—

"Darbishire!"Mr Wilkins' voice shattered the day-dream and the

boy came to with a start. "Yes, sir?""You weren't listening. I could tell by the look on

your face.""Oh, I was listening, sir.""Then what was I saying?""You were telling us about a squirrel, sir. The one

that went to Land's End."Mr Wilkins tut-tutted in exasperation. "That wasn't

a real squirrel, you silly little boy.""You said it was, sir. You said it went from

Sherwood Forest—"

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"That was just an example of what could have hap-pened. A hypothetical case."

"A what case, sir?""Hypothetical. Imaginary. Not true in actual fact."Darbishire was disappointed. He felt deeply

attached to his hypothetical squirrel. Mr Wilkins had no right to go about saying things that weren't true.

"In any case that was ten minutes ago," the master went on. "You haven't been listening to a word I've been saying about carbon dioxide and the 'greenhouse effect'in Brazil."

"Sorry, sir."

"So I should think. Now sit up and pay attention. I don't want to waste any more time arguing about non-existent squirrels when we've got a lot of work to get through."

But, once again, Mr Wilkins' intention of getting down to work was thwarted. For at that moment a clank, rumble and thump broke on the air from outside the window.

The sound was not easy to identify. It might have been an overloaded supermarket trolley forcing its way through a gravel pit; it might have been a cement-mixer unlf/ading its contents on a building site.

Mr Wilkins strode across the room and threw the window wide. He poked his head out.

"Jennings!" he shouted with the full force of his lungs.

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The clanking ceased as the roller came to rest. "Yes, sir?"

"What in the name of thunder are you doing? Leave that thing alone and come indoors at once!"

Jennings' voice floated back through the window. "I can't, sir. I can't get free."

"Can't get free! What d'you mean?"Jennings raised his left arm and the handle of the

roller rose with it. "I'm tied up, sir. I can't get the chain off."

"You silly little boy! What on earth were you play-ing at?"

38

39

"Space Invaders, sir. You see, I was an alien from Planet X and Venables—"

"Doh!" An explosive sound like a compressed-air tyre-pump burst from the master's lips. He'd heard more than enough about Planet X for one afternoon.

"—and Venables chained me up and went off with the key, so if he's in the classroom I wonder if you'd very kindly ask him to pass it out of the window, or come and unlock—"

Mr Wilkins interrupted the explanation."Atkinson, go and get the key from Venables. He's

in the corridor outside the Head's study."Atkinson set off on his errand of liberation. He did

not hurry. By taking his time he might yet be able to postpone the effort of getting down to serious work.

In this, Atkinson was successful. By the time Jennings finally arrived in the classroom and a studious atmosphere once more prevailed, there were barely five minutes left for Mr Wilkins' explanation of the havoc being wrought in the South American rain forests.

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CHAPTER 3

MISS THORPE GOES GREEN

Mr Pemberton-Oakes found the world globe a useful teaching-aid when he talked to the boys at Assembly the following morning.

Admittedly, it was looking somewhat the worse for wear and slightly out of shape. Venables' shoes had caused a few dents, transforming the Himalayan mountain range into a valley below sea level and sug-gesting that the globe was not the indestructible object which he and Jennings had believed it to be.

Furthermore, exposure to the wet grass and flower-beds had done nothing to improve its colour: the oceans now looked a paler shade of blue and the grasslands a paler shade of green. When set spinning, it wobbled on its axis.

It would have to be replaced, of course, the head-master decided, and the culprits would have to bear the cost. But using it in its present dilapidated condition would press home the point of his talk: the battering which the globe had suffered at the hands of thoughtless boys was, in miniature, an example of

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the battering suffered by the real world at the hands of thoughtless people of all nations.

With the aid of his wobbling model, the headmaster pointed out the areas at risk from acid rain and outlined the chemical effects of the burning of tropical forests. He spoke of the animals and plants whose future exist-ence was at risk because of the world-wide misuse of natural resources.

Coming closer to home, he talked of pesticides on farms and pollution in rivers. He spoke of the vast amount of waste caused by discarded egg boxes, card-board cartons and plastic wrapping.

"I read the other day," he told them, "that four and a half billion drink cans were thrown away in this country last year. Placed end to end they would have reached the Moon. And if, in addition, we include bottles and aerosol sprays ..."

Seventy-eight boys listened with attention. The seventy-ninth (listed on the register as Darbishire C. E. J.) had stopped listening, fascinated by the statistics.

All those drink cans! They must be (what was the word? Hypo-something. Oh, yes!). They must be hypothetical drink cans, he decided. Rather like Mr Wilkins' squirrel, only more difficult to imagine. You could understand a squirrel going all that way if it really wanted to, but the mind boggled at the thought of that tottering tower of drink cans stretching all the

42

way up to the Moon. You'd never be able to balance them: after you'd piled up a dozen, they'd topple over if you tried to put any more on top. It was ridiculous! Hypothetical squirrels - perhaps. Hypothetical drink cans - no chance! He switched his mind back to the headmaster's discourse on ecology.

"I saw Miss Thorpe in the village yesterday after-noon," he was saying. "Those of you who have met her will not be surprised to know that she is very interested in the preservation of the countryside and is making plans to deal with the litter and waste that we see around us.

"So, on Saturday afternoon, I have arranged that the junior forms will split up into groups and carry out a cleaning-up exercise in and around the village. Miss Thorpe's cottage will be the headquarters of the operation and the collected rubbish will be taken there and sorted out. Anything that can be recycled - and, as you know, recycling is of great importance in the prevention of waste - anything that can be recycled, such as bottles and - er -other things will be separated from the disposable rubbish. Furthermore, Miss Thorpe plans to distribute leaflets to all the houses in the village asking for their co-operation in the project. Any questions?"

Blotwell, one of the youngest boys, put up his hand. "Please, sir, I haven't got a bike."

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The headmaster was puzzled. "You won't need one, Blotwell. You'll be on foot."

"But, sir, you said cycling was important for collecting bottles and things."

Patiently, the headmaster explained that recycling applied to objects which could be used again and had nothing to do with boys on bicycles. Blotwell seemed satisfied.

By the time all queries had been dealt with, the morning Assembly had overrun its allotted span of fifteen minutes and taken up the whole of the first lesson which had to be cancelled.

The boys were more than willing to sacrifice their studies in the cause of ecology. Form Three were espe-cially pleased, rejoicing in the added bonus of having missed Mr Wilkins' maths test, scheduled for the first lesson of the morning.

Miss Thorpe of Oaktree Cottage was a slightly built, middle-aged lady with a warm heart and forthright opinions. She it was who organised the social life of the village: jumble sales, pre-school playgroups, whist drives and coach excursions for the Mothers' Union were just a small part of her activities in aid of the inhabitants of Linbury.

She was somewhat bird-like in appearance. She moved with the fluttering action of a sparrow evading a tom-cat and spoke in the high-pitched tones of

44

a well-trained mynah-bird demanding its breakfast.

Oaktree Cottage, which she shared with an unruly dog called Jason and a tankful of tropical fish, had a steeply sloping roof, frail bow windows and a nail-studded front door. The cottage was small, but at the far end of her garden was a thatched barn, once part of adjoining farm land, which she had bought in order to store items of furniture for which she had no room indoors.

The barn, being spacious, was to serve as the head-quarters of her project, and on Saturday afternoon she stood at the entrance clasping an armful of dustbin bags as Mr Carter and Mr Wilkins arrived with a youthful band of helpers.

"Come along, everybody! Lovely to see you," she chirruped, like a blackbird greeting the dawn. "Plenty of work for everyone."

Mr Carter said, "Good afternoon, Miss Thorpe. I hear your conservation project is keeping you busy."

"Yes, indeed, Mr Carter," she replied. "There's so much to do I hardly know which way to turn. The work has snowballed enormously since I became a hundred per cent green."

Binns and Blotwell, the youngest boys in the school, were standing close at hand. They peered at her curiously: so far as they could tell, Miss Thorpe's complexion looked its normal shade of pink and white.

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No trace of any other colour. And what did she mean by green snowballs?

"And it's such good news that you boys have agreed to go green, too," she twittered on, favouring Binns and Blotwell with an encouraging smile. "I'm sure you'll agree that green is the only colour to be in this day and age."

The two youngest boys stopped looking at Miss Thorpe and glanced at each other. Apart from a smudge of blue ink on Binns' nose and dirty grey fingermarks on Blotwell's right cheek, they, too, seemed to have retained their usual pigmentation. So what was the woman talking about?

She saw their puzzled expressions and explained."I don't mean literally green, of course. I just meant

that green is the emblem of all of us who are trying to save the world from waste and destruction."

"Oh, I see," said Binns."Green is the colour of Nature and the fruits of the

earth," she announced in a high-pitched trill. "The colour of grass, of leaves in spring, of - of . . ." She paused, seeking further examples.

"Greenfly," suggested Binns."Greengrocers," added Blotwell. He would have

said "greenhouse", but remembered the headmaster's warning about its evil effect.

Miss Thorpe began thrusting the dustbin bags into the hands of the working party crowding around her.

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"Here you are, boys. Two bags each. One for rubbish and one for recycling. Don't get them mixed up."

Most of the boys had already decided which area of the village they proposed to tidy up. Venables, Temple and Atkinson had chosen the disused railway line, which had become an unofficial dumping ground for a variety of rubbish ranging from old boots to broken bedsteads. Martin-Jones and Rumbelow proposed calling at houses to collect bottles and old newspapers. Bromwich, working alone, intended to scour Church Lane, a well-known resting place for take-away food cartons and fish-and-chip wrapping. Other boys set off for the fields round Arrowsmith's farm where the farm workers were known to leave empty fertiliser sacks blowing about in the wind.

"I suggest we wander round and keep an eye on how things are going," Mr Carter said to his colleague as the boys hurried off on their search. "Jennings and Darbishire haven't got here yet, but they shouldn't be long."

"Last as usual - they would be!" Mr Wilkins grum-bled. "I had to set off without them. Some nonsense about Darbishire's shoelaces." He glanced down the road and spotted the missing rubbish-hunters in the distance, hurrying towards the cottage. Jennings was in the lead with Darbishire shuffling along some fifty yards behind him.

"Come along, Carter, let's leave them to catch up,"

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Mr Wilkins said. "I'm not wasting any more time over those two."

It was, indeed, an inextricable knot in Darbishire's shoelace which had made the two boys so late in start-ing. The knot had defied all efforts to disentangle it, and after some minutes of fruitless pulling and tugging Jennings cut the lace with his penknife. By which time the main party was beyond the school grounds and out of sight.

"You're always getting your stupid laces in a knot," Jennings complained as Darbishire tried to fasten his shoe with the inadequate inch and a half of lace which now remained. "For goodness sake, get a move on. There won't be any rubbish left by the time we get there."

"It's not my fault. It isn't long enough to tie properly," Darbishire defended himself. "It comes undone every time I wiggle my foot."

"Don't wiggle it, then."The short shoelace was a problem as the two boys

set off in the wake of the official working party. By curling up his toes, Darbishire could control his footwear when shuffling along at a snail's pace, but whenever he tried to run his left shoe shot off his foot causing further delay.

When they reached the village street Jennings waited for his friend to catch up. "Come on," he encouraged him. "There's Mr Carter and Old Wilkie waiting

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outside Miss Thorpe's. Sir will go into orbit if he's kept hanging about much longer. Can't you go any faster?"

Darbishire hobbled to a halt. "I'm going as fast as I can."

"Call that fast!" Jennings scoffed. "I could go faster than that on a wheel-clamped skateboard."

By the time they arrived at the cottage, the masters had left to keep an eye on the working party, but Miss Thorpe was still in the garden.

"Better late than never," she greeted them. "I'm afraid all the dustbin bags have gone. We'll have to find you something else to do." She paused for a moment. "Ah! I've just thought! You can distribute the environment leaflets round the village. That would be most helpful."

Miss Thorpe fluttered into the cottage and emerged a few minutes later with a large stack of leaflets secured by an elastic band.

"All made from recycled paper," she assured them. "I persuaded the postman's daughter to run off four hundred copies for me on her duplicating machine. Rather more than we'll need, I expect, but it's better to err on the safe side. Just pop one through each letter-box." She frowned doubtfully at the handiwork of the postman's daughter. "Some of them haven't come out very well, I'm afraid. Perhaps the paper was a trifle flimsy."

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The leaflets were headed Keep Linbury Green. Below were hints in smudged type on how to prevent household waste, which readers with keen eyesight would have been able to decipher with a little intelligent guess-work.

"Handle them carefully, boys," Miss Thorpe advised, thrusting the bundle into Jennings' hands. "You can see they're rather on the fragile side."

Fragile they certainly were, as the boys found to their cost when they began their leaflet distribution in Church Lane. Few of the old houses had letter-boxes and the wafer-thin tissue crumpled into paper balls when they tried to force the leaflets through the narrow gaps beneath the front doors.

"Oh, fish-hooks, this is hopeless!" Jennings com-plained. "I can't see how these people ever get any post, unless the postman drops it down the chimney."

So they moved on to a nearby residential road of modern houses with trim front gardens and letterboxes in the front doors.

Darbishire's shoelace was still hampering his move-ments. Twice in the short walk from Church Lane his shoe had come adrift and Jennings' patience was wearing thin.

"You'll have to do something about it, Darbi," he said, as they turned the corner into Marina Gardens. "We've got four hundred leaflets to get rid of, and if you're going to stop and fiddle about with your shoe

50

every five yards we'll never get round the village by tea-time."

"Sorry, Jen. If only I'd got a bit of string or some-thing I should be all right." Darbishire clenched his toes and screwed up his face. "I'm keeping it on by sheer will-power, but it doesn't work for very long."

Jennings thought for a moment and said, "I know what!" He slipped the rubber band off the pile of leaflets which he placed on a flat-topped garden gatepost a few feet from where they had stopped. He tossed the band to Darbishire. "Here, try this!"

Darbishire was delighted. He put the band under the sole of his shoe and stretched it up over his instep. He wiggled his toes and found that the makeshift elastic fastening kept his shoe in place reasonably well.

"Good scheme, Jen. I can switch off my will-power, now." He stretched the rubber band and twanged it with his finger, producing a vaguely musical note. Pleased with his success, he stretched it further and twanged a higher note. "Hey, listen, I can play a tune," he said.

"Never mind playing tunes. We've got a job to do.""It's what violinists do when they don't use their

bow," Darbishire went on. "It's called pizzicato. If I practise, I might get on television as the world's first elastic-band-round-the-footpizzicato player."

"Don't talk such addle-pated eyewash," Jennings said firmly. "I solve your problem for you, and all

51

you do is to stand there waffling about music coming out of your feet."

"Sorry, Jen, I got carried away. I'm terribly grateful really. I think your idea's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant!"

The idea was not absolutely brilliant! For the wind which had been blowing strongly all afternoon chose that moment to launch a sudden gust of gale-force ferocity. The leaflets placed on the gatepost and no longer secured by the rubber band soared up into the air like a vast flock of birds.

Within moments, the road was festooned from end to end with an upsurge of four hundred leaflets, swirling and dancing in the wind like autumn leaves. Skimming the rooftops, they twirled and eddied about the chimney-pots until, losing momentum as the gust blew itself out, they parachuted down into the front gardens, enveloping bushes, shrubs and garden gnomes in a coating of recycled tissue.

There were leaflets impaled on rose thorns and stuck in the branches of cherry trees; they were lodged on window-sills and car bonnets and spiked on television aerials. Along the entire length of the road, front gardens were strewn with litter.

A moment later, Mr Wilkins turned the corner into Marina Gardens and found himself ankle-deep in the remains of four hundred tattered pieces of paper urging the residents to keep the village tidy.

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CHAPTER 4

MARINA GARDENS GETS THE MESSAGE

To begin with, Mr Wilkins couldn't make out what had happened. The swirling tide of paper about his feet seemed to suggest that a lorry had shed its load. But there was no lorry in sight - nor any sign of a helicopter doing a leaflet-drop. At that point, front doors opened and householders began to emerge with baffled expressions on their faces.

Then Mr Wilkins saw Jennings and Darbishire further along the road. They were standing open-mouthed and wide-eyed with horror as though unable to believe that the havoc they had caused was not some mind-bending nightmare from which they would soon awake.

"Jennings! Darbishire! Come here!" he called loudly.

The boys approached numb with shock, their guilt-ridden features plainly showing that they were responsible for what had happened.

"Come along now, what have you been up to?" Mr Wilkins demanded.

Jennings took a deep breath. "Well, sir, it was

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like this," he began. "Miss Thorpe gave us some leaflets—"

"In a rubber band," Darbishire put in, anxious to get the details right.

"—and she told us to put them through everybody's letter-boxes."

Mr Wilkins raised despairing eyes to the heavens. "Instead of which, you decided to scatter them like chaff in the wind, hoping that they'd drift down and sail through tightly closed letter-boxes without hindrance."

"Oh, no, sir. It was an accident. It was Darbishire's shoelace. We had to take the rubber band off just as the wind came up and—"

"All right, all right!" Mr Wilkins was in no mood to listen to excuses about Darbishire's shoe-fastening problems. He pointed to a display of leaflets adorning a nearby privet hedge. "Look what you've done! You've plastered the whole neighbourhood in rubbish."

"Sorry, sir.""Sorry! So I should think. Start clearing it up at

once."Darbishire stooped and picked up seven leaflets

lying in the road beside him. He reflected that if Miss Thorpe's figures were right there were still another three hundred and ninety-three more scraps of paper to be collected - and some of them were out of reach.

On second thoughts, Mr Wilkins realised that it

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would be futile to tackle the task without help. "Go and find the rest of the party," he ordered. "Tell them to stop whatever they're doing and report to me here immediately."

"Yes, sir."Jennings turned to go, then stopped. "Where shall

we find them, sir? Do you know where they've gone?""No I don't know where they've gone," Mr Wilkins

stormed. "They're scattered all round the village. It's your job to find them. Go and start looking."

It was clear from the exasperation in the master's voice that it would be unwise to question him further. So Jennings and Darbishire edged their way through the growing crowd of householders who were now looking for someone to blame for the avalanche of pollution that had ended up in their front gardens.

Mr Wilkins was the obvious suspect. Within moments he found himself surrounded by indignant residents who assumed that this stranger in their midst was solely to blame for the disaster.

"There he is! He knows all about it - that man in the raincoat!" a stout lady in an apron informed her neighbours. "I came out as soon as I saw all that paper flying about and there he was in the road talking to two boys."

The crowd edged a little closer."No, no, it wasn't me, I assure you," Mr Wilkins

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protested. "I didn't get here until after it happened. Too late to do anything about it, I'm afraid."

A tall middle-aged man in a striped anorak advanced from the rear of the group. "Come on, out with it!" he growled. "What have you been up to?"

"Me? Nothing - or rather, it wasn't me, personally. Two stupid boys had an unfortunate accident. It was entirely their fault and—"

"I don't see any boys," the man broke in."They've gone now. I sent them off to get help.

They were part of a working party we'd organised.""So you were in charge of them, eh?""I'm afraid so - or rather, yes, of course I was.""And acting on your instructions they threw all this

litter into our gardens?""No, no, you don't understand. We're doing a pro-

ject, you see," Mr Wilkins explained. "We're tidying up the village - keeping Linbury green."

"Tidying the village!" the man echoed in wrathful disbelief. "Keeping it green\" He pointed over the fence of a nearby garden.

"Look at my lawn! It was green enough before you came along. Now it looks more like it's under a six-inch fall of snow . . . And look at my gnome - just look at it!"

Mr Wilkins looked. In the middle of the so-called snowstorm was a garden gnome sitting on a toadstool and holding a fishing-rod. On the hook at the end of

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its line a leaflet was impaled. Keep Linbury Green, it read.

"I'm terribly sorry," Mr Wilkins apologised. "It was just an accident, I assure you."

The man in the anorak snorted. "You ought to know better, at your age. We know your sort. You're one of those litter louts - that's what!"

The crowd nodded in agreement. The words passed from lip to lip. "Litter lout! Litter lout! Litter lout!"

"It's a criminal offence, dropping litter," said a young woman with a baby in a pram. "We could have you arrested."

"That's right," the crowd confirmed. "Send for the police! Give him in charge!"

Mr Wilkins was deeply mortified. Just wait till he saw Jennings and Darbishire again! he told himself. Just let them wait! Aloud, he said, "No, really, don't send for the police. I'll see the boys who were responsible are punished as soon as I get back to school."

But there was no escape for the scapegoat. "That's no use to us! You'd better get started clearing up the mess," the large man threatened. "You pick up all this litter - or else!"

"But I can't do it all by myself," Mr Wilkins pro-tested. "I've sent a message for reinforcements. They'll be here shortly, I promise you."

"We'll believe that when they get here," the man retorted. "Meanwhile, either you start clearing up

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right away, or we get the police to come and deal with you."

Outnumbered by the indignant householders, Mr Wilkins had no choice but to obey. Still protesting his innocence, he stooped and picked up three leaflets blowing in the wind about his feet.

Had Darbishire been present, he would have been quick to note that, according to Miss Thorpe's calcula-tions, only another three hundred and ninety remained to be collected.

Although the working party was widely dispersed about the village, Jennings and Darbishire had no trouble in finding a fair number of them to help with the cleaning-up operation in Marina Gardens.

They found Bromwich in Church Lane with half a sackful of take-away food wrappers and drink cartons. Venables, Temple and Atkinson, clearing debris on the old railway line, were arguing about an abandoned, rusty weathercock which Atkinson wanted to send to the British Museum. Martin-Jones and Rumbelow, engaged on a house-to-house collection, were run to earth in the yard behind the Linbury Stores and Post Office. Their hands were sticky with tomato ketchup and marmalade as they sorted out the plastic sauce bottles from the glass jam jars which had to be kept in a separate sack.

"You'd think they'd rinse them out before they

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handed them over," Rumbelow was complaining as Jennings and Darbishire approached. "Never mind about keeping Linbury green. The first thing people ought to learn is to keep it unsticky."

Needless to say, all the scavengers resented the interruption of their labours. "What's happened, then? Why have we got to go?" they demanded.

"It's Jennings' fault," Darbishire told them. "He let about fifty million bits of paper blow away and they've all got to be picked up."

"Don't blame me - blame Darbishire," Jennings retorted. "If it hadn't been for his crazy laces it wouldn't have happened. Anyway, you've all got to go. Old Wilkie's orders. Everyone's got to report to him in Marina Gardens at once."

Grumbling, the members of the working party went off to report to Mr Wilkins.

"I reckon we've found about enough blokes now," Jennings said after several more unwilling workers had been rounded up and sent on their way. "Supposing there were four hundred leaflets, as Miss Thorpe said. If old Sir's got twenty helpers, they've only got to pick up twenty each."

"Not me," said Darbishire. "I picked up seven before we started so I've only got to find another thirteen."

Their way back to Marina Gardens led them past Oaktree Cottage. As they drew level, Miss Thorpe

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came out into the garden and greeted them over the hedge.

"You have been busy!" she said, noticing the boys were empty-handed. "I never thought you'd be able to distribute all those leaflets so quickly. Did you have any problems?"

Jennings frowned in thought. They'd certainly dis-tributed the leaflets - though perhaps not according to plan. And they'd certainly had problems!

"We didn't quite get all round the village," he ad-mitted, hoping to break the news gently. "Some of the houses in Church Lane didn't have letter-boxes, but I think everyone in Marina Gardens got the message."

He was trying to think of a tactful way to explain and apologise, but before he had put his thoughts in order she chirruped, "Well done, boys! You must be exhausted. Come indoors and have a glass of milk and a biscuit."

"I'm afraid we can't, thanks all the same," Jennings told her. "We've got to report to Mr Wilkins."

"Oh, I'm sure he wouldn't mind, considering how hard you've been working. I shan't detain you for long."

She wouldn't take no for an answer, so with deep misgiving they followed her indoors. Here they became the target of mock attacks from Jason, the playful boxer puppy, who seemed to think that all visitors to the cottage had come for the express purpose of lying

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on the floor and playing tug-of-war with his mistress's Wellington boots.

Thus it was that the boys stayed at the cottage for longer than they had intended. Their hostess was more than generous with the supply of refreshments and kept up a continual flow of conversation which gave the boys no chance to tell her about the accident with the leaflets. For when Miss Thorpe was in full spate it was difficult to get a word in edgeways and impossible to get up and leave without seeming impolite.

They were still listening to Miss Thorpe and laugh-ing at the antics of Jason, when voices were heard outside in the garden. Mr Wilkins and his working party, their task accomplished, were returning to base.

Miss Thorpe, with Jason bounding ahead, hastened into the garden to greet them. They were followed more slowly by Jennings and Darbishire, looking guilty and embarrassed and trying to brush the tell-tale biscuit crumbs from their clothing.

Mr Wilkins was smouldering with exasperation and was barely civil in replying to Miss Thorpe's query about the events of the afternoon.

"Frankly, Miss Thorpe, we've had a frustrating and humiliating time, thanks to these two boys." He pointed an accusing forefinger at the culprits. "Why didn't you report back to me? What do you mean by going to ground in Miss Thorpe's house when

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you should have been clearing up the mess with the others?"

"Oh, but they weren't hiding, Mr Wilkins, I assure you," Miss Thorpe protested. "I invited them in for refreshments as a reward for all their hard work."

Mr Wilkins swallowed hard in an effort to control his feelings. While he was recovering, Venables nudged Temple and said, "The cheek of it! Sitting there stuffing themselves and laughing their heads off, while we had to crawl around on our hands and knees doing their dirty work for them."

"And getting blamed for it," added Temple who had been told off by the man in the anorak for failing to retrieve some sodden leaflets floating in a goldfish pond. He rounded angrily on Jennings. "We saw you through the window, guzzling and swigging drinks when we came up the path. Don't try to deny it."

"I wasn't going to," Jennings said humbly. "We'd have come and helped only it wasn't polite to get away."

Mr Wilkins silenced the argument with a frown and turned again to Miss Thorpe. "I shall deal with this business when I get back to school," he said. "Mean-while, we'd better dump the rubbish - such as it is."

It was growing dusk as Miss Thorpe led the way up the garden to her barn and switched on the light. She had cleared a space on the floor on which she invited the collectors to tip their bulging sacks of salvage.

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This they did. From the top half of each sack a cascade of crumpled leaflets urging the inhabitants to keep Linbury green came pouring out onto the floor. Miss Thorpe stared at them in bewilderment.

"What's this?" she cried, eyeing the debris suspi-ciously, like a bullfinch inspecting a potato crisp. "I thought they'd all been distributed."

"Only in Marina Gardens," Jennings said apologeti-cally. "We had problems, you see."

"Yes, but all the same—!" Her voice rose to the squawk of a magpie, disturbed in raiding a nest. "Kindly explain! I don't understand what's happened."

She would have said more, but at that moment there was a diversion. The top half of the sacks having disgorged their contents, there now followed various objects which had been collected earlier.

On top of the remains, in a take-away food carton collected by Bromwich, was a leg of roast chicken, thrown away by some customer with a jaded appetite.

Jason had been hovering on the edge of the group. Now, with nostrils wide and tail erect, he darted between the legs of the boys around him, snatched the leg of chicken from the pile of debris and made off down the garden and into the road beyond.

Miss Thorpe forgot all about the leaflets. "Stop him!"

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she cried in shrill tones. "Stop him! He's not allowed chicken bones."

There was a rush into the road in pursuit of the playful boxer. Mr Wilkins sighed deeply and watched them go. He'd had enough activity for one afternoon.

It was ten minutes before the pursuit party returned with its prisoner. Jason was trotting along obediently with Jennings' raincoat belt fastened to his collar as a makeshift lead. Miss Thorpe was so thankful to see him safely back that, for the moment, she appeared to have forgotten about the ruined leaflets.

By this time it was nearly dark. Mr Carter and the rest of the scavengers had returned with their offerings and the party headed back to Linbury Court.

Mr Carter had spent an enjoyable afternoon. For much of the time he had been wandering over Arrowsmith's farm where a group of boys had been collecting empty fertiliser and pesticide sacks, carelessly dumped in fields or impaled on barbed-wire fences. This was work to be encouraged, for the plastic sacks, being almost indestructible, would have remained an eyesore for months to come.

"Binns and Blotwell were very worried about the pesticide sacks - wouldn't touch them without their gloves on," Mr Carter told his colleague on the way back. "I tried to explain that Mr Arrowsmith wasn't deliberately trying to poison them, but they still had their suspicions. Binns said that if he had to choose

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between saving ladybirds and growing larger potatoes, he'd be on the side of the insects."

Mr Wilkins was still brooding on the disastrous efforts of Jennings and Darbishire when they arrived at school where Mr Pemberton-Oakes was anxious to hear how the project was progressing.

"I'm not letting those two boys take part any more," he told the headmaster. "They made a complete mess of things. They haven't enough sense to distribute a used bus ticket, let alone a whole batch of leaflets."

Mr Pemberton-Oakes did not agree. "It's regret-table, of course, and I'll see that they write to Miss Thorpe and apologise," he said when he had heard the results of the Marina Gardens fiasco. "On the other hand, it's just the sort of accident that could have happened to any scatterbrained boy who failed to concentrate on what he was doing."

Mr Wilkins frowned and said nothing. It was all very well for the headmaster to make light of the incident, but he hadn't had to put up with the threats and insults of the man in the anorak and his cronies.

"I suggest a punishment more fitted to the crime," the headmaster went on. "I shall not allow them to play football for a couple of weeks. Instead, I shall make them report to Miss Thorpe for an afternoon's scavenging on Saturdays. It will give them the chance to make up for their irresponsible behaviour today."

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Jennings had to agree that the punishment was lenient when he heard the headmaster's decision at Assembly on Monday morning. He was disappointed, of course, for there were three Second XI football matches scheduled for the following fortnight and he was certain to have been chosen for the side if he had been allowed to play.

Darbishire had no such regrets. He didn't enjoy playing football and would never have been picked for the team, anyway. Quite a nice punishment! he thought. And wandering round with a dustbin bag pretending he was an eminent archaeologist was something to look forward to.

He would be Professor Darbishire, MA, PhD, Dip-something-or-other, he decided, searching for specimens of rare Stone Age cooking pots to add to his world-famous collection.

The bell rang for first lesson and the eminent archaeologist hurried off to his classroom to search for a rare twentieth-century ballpoint pen which had recently gone missing.

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CHAPTER S

THE TEA-POT TROPHY

On Tuesday morning before breakfast Jennings wrote a letter of apology to Miss Thorpe and read it aloud to Darbishire. It began:

Dear Miss ThorpeWe hope you are quite well. We are very sorry we

did not do your leaflets very well owing to strong winds but we will try and do better next time. Darbishire has some new laces so we will give you your elastic band back when we come but it has got stretched a bit owing to Darbishire's shoe—

The scribe broke off. "What else can I say?" Darbishire pulled a face. "Anything you like. Write about the weather - you usually do." After some thought, the letter continued:

The weather here is clement as I hope it is also in your locality.

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"The weather is what?" Darbishire queried."Clement. It means fine in old English. I read it

somewhere in a book.""OK, if you say so. Sounds a bit pompous to me.

And what d'you mean by her locality'?""Where she lives, of course.""I know that, you clodpoll. But seeing that her

house is less than half a mile away, her weather is going to be just the same as ours."

Jennings threw down his pen. "Honestly, Darbi, if you're going to pick holes in everything I write we'll never get it finished. You do it yourself, if you're so clever."

"There's no time to do it again," Darbishire said as the breakfast bell rang. "Just finish if off with 'yours sincerely'. I expect she'll know what it means."

It was the custom at meal-times for certain boys to ftct as waiters for the various tables in the dining-hall. Besides carrying round the food prepared in the kitchen, they had also to clear away the plates and cutlery at the end of a meal and assist the domestic Staff in loading the dishwashers.

Waiting at table was a popular duty, for when the meal was over the waiters had the advantage of sharing amongst themselves any extra portions which remained. This, they agreed, was a well-earned "perk" for their labours.

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Furthermore, a wily waiter could, if he wished, reward his friends and spite his enemies by giving first option of second helpings to friends of his choice, while ignoring the pleadings of others, equally hungry, who did not meet with his approval.

Venables was the waiter for Form Three table that morning. Having bolted his own portion of bacon and tomatoes, he stood up and said, "Anyone want any more? If there is any, that is."

Jennings' plate was empty. He put up his hand and said, "Yes, please."

The waiter disappeared into the kitchen and returned a few minutes later with one small rasher and an under-sized tomato in his serving dish. "This is all that's left. Sorry!" he apologised.

Jennings held up his plate, but the waiter ignored him and stood behind Temple who was hurriedly swallowing the remains of his first plateful in the hope of obtaining a second.

Temple's mouth was so full of bacon that he couldn't speak, but his eyebrows fluttered a signal to say that he was ready for a second helping.

"Hey, Venables, I asked first," Jennings protested.Venables pretended not to hear and tipped the

remaining morsel on to Temple's over-full plate.Jennings was furious. "That's not fair! I was first.

You know I was!""Oh, were you? I didn't know. Sorry!" Venables

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grinned and exchanged a knowing look with his jaw-champing confederate.

"You did it on purpose. You gave it to Temple just because he lent you his magnet," Jennings said accusingly.

Venables shrugged. "Too late now, he's eating it - well, he will be when he's finished his first lot." He went back into the kitchen and emerged shortly afterwards carrying a large, enamel tea-pot. "Anyone for more tea?" he asked as he made his way along the third-form table, dispensing second cups. "Best quality unleaded diesel dregs!"

Most of the boys accepted, but Jennings was still smouldering from Venables' outrageous treatment and looked away when the waiter appeared at his shoulder.

"More tea, Jen?" Venables asked, with the tea-pot poised to pour.

"No," said Jennings. And without thinking he put his hand over his cup to reject the invitation.

It was too late! The spout was tilted, the tea already in mid-stream, and the scalding liquid splashed down on to the back of Jennings' hand.

"Ow!" he yelled aloud, snatching his injured hand away from the cup.

The yell silenced the buzz of conversation all round the dining-hall. Everybody stopped eating and all eyes swivelled round to the Form Three table.

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At the far end of the room the bell on the masters' table rang and Mr Carter demanded, "Who made that noise?"

Jennings stood up gasping with pain and clutching his injured hand beneath his left armpit. "I did, sir. I got burnt. I got scalded with boiling hot tea."

"It was his own fault, sir. If he hadn't put his hand out, he'd have been all right," the waiter defended himself. "I'd started pouring when he said he didn't want any and I couldn't stop it."

"Come here, Jennings," said Mr Carter.Still grimacing with pain, Jennings reported to the

top table and held out his hand for inspection. There was an ugly red mark on the back and he flinched when Mr Carter tried to examine it.

"I can see it's painful, but I don't think it's serious," the master diagnosed. "Go and put it under the cold tap."

When Jennings had gone, Mr Carter said, "That was clumsy of you, Venables."

"Oh, but sir, it was an accident. He put his hand over the cup. I didn't mean to."

"I should hope not. But if you can't pour out the tea more carefully than that, we'll let somebody else do your job." His gaze swept round Form Three table. "Rumbelow, you can take over from Venables for the rest of the week."

The incident sparked off heated arguments after

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breakfast. Groups of third-formers gathered on the playground airing their views and pledging their support for one side or the other.

Temple, fortified by extra bacon and tomato, was a keen supporter of Venables. "Of course it was Jennings' fault," he maintained. "Nobody but a clodpoll would stick his dirty great paw out like that just when the waiter had started pouring."

"Ah, but he had no choice. He'd have got a cupful that he didn't want otherwise," countered Rumbelow.

"So what! You're only on Jennings' side because you've got Venables' waiting job. Anyway, there was no need for Jennings to yell his head off, and let the masters know."

"Huh! I'd like to see you keep your mouth shut when you'd just been scalded," said Darbishire.

Temple rounded angrily on Jennings' most staunch ally. "How d'you know how hot the tea was? It's usually half cold by the time it comes round for second cupfuls."

The argument developed into a feud between the contending parties as the day wore on and it became a matter of importance to show which side claimed one's allegiance. Supporters of the Jennings party tattooed a cup and saucer on the back of their hands with red and blue ballpoint and felt-tipped pens. Those in favour of the rival

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group drew a tea-pot with liquid gushing from the spout.

Mr Wilkins was not pleased when he took Form Three for maths that morning and noticed the state of their hands.

"How many more times have I got to tell you boys that you are not allowed to tattoo yourselves with ballpoints?" he fumed, and the whole class was sent down to the wash-room to scrub themselves clean.

The tattoo ban did little to stem the pointless and puerile arguments which went on until the following morning when the headmaster summoned Jennings and Venables to his study on an entirely different matter.

When they arrived, they were confronted by Mr Pemberton-Oakes seated at his desk on which was a brand-new globe of the world. He gave them an unwelcoming frown and said sternly, "As you see, I have had to replace the school globe which you two boys ruined by your stupid and disobedient behaviour."

They stood with downcast eyes, striving to look penitent.

"I have given the matter some thought and I am unable to decide which of you was the more culpable."

Jennings looked blank. "More what, sir?""Culpable. From the Latin culpa meaning blame. Is

that clear?"

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"Yes, sir. You mean we're both culpa - er - you mean it's both of us's fault."

Mr Pemberton-Oakes flinched at the ear-offending use of the pronoun, but he let it pass.

"Exactly. You, Jennings, for taking the globe out on to the playground and Venables for playing football with it."

Venables felt aggrieved. His part in the crime was being magnified out of all proportion. He hadn't actually played football with it. Still, one couldn't debate hair-splitting details with the Head, so he said nothing.

"That being so," Mr Pemberton-Oakes continued, "your parents will be charged jointly with the cost of providing this new - and, may I add, very expensive - globe, which you will treat with extreme care."

"Yes, sir. We'll be ever so careful in future, hon-estly, sir."

"Right!" The headmaster indicated the model on his desk. "Take it to Form Three classroom and put it on the shelf where it belongs."

Jennings picked up the new globe, handling it as if it were made of delicate china. As they turned to go, Venables said, "What shall we do with the old one, sir?"

"Dispose of it," the headmaster replied. "Thanks to your stupid behaviour it's of no practical use to anyone."

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So, the old wobbling globe was taken down from its shelf and the new one installed in its place.

"Where are we going to dump old wobbly?" Venables said with the old globe in his arms. "The waste-paper basket's overflowing already."

Jennings said, "Pity to throw it away! It's bound to come in useful for something. After all, it's ours now if our parents have got to pay for the new one."

The hostility between Jennings and Venables was showing signs of cooling down - at least to the extent that they could discuss the present situation without exchanging insults.

"Oh, yes, it's ours all right," Venables agreed. "The Head said so - more or less. But what can we do with it? Needs thinking out."

They thought. . .Then Jennings said, "We could have a football

match. All the blokes who think you're right about the tea-pot versus the blokes who stick up for me."

"Yes, but I don't see—""Well, there's no point in you and me going on

being enemies over that tea-pot business for the rest of the term. And, anyway, my hand's a lot better now so we could have a match to settle it."

"Settle what?""The argument. We could say that whoever wins

the match was right all the time."It was, perhaps, an unusual twist to the medieval

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custom of trial by combat, but it seemed a fair -if somewhat illogical - solution to a quarrel which neither side really wanted to continue.

Venables thought for a moment and said, "OK. But where does the old globe come in?"

"We'll use it for the ball," Jennings replied. "And the winning side can keep it for a prize to prove they were right all along. We could call it the Tea-pot Trophy."

So, before afternoon school that day, an historic five-a-side, ten-minutes-each-way contest was held on the playground to decide who was the hero and who the villain in the controversial hot-tea drama.

The match was keenly contested: Venables, Temple, Atkinson, Lewis and Nuttall versus Jennings, Rumbelow, Martin-Jones, Bromwich and Evans. Darbishire, though a keen supporter of the Jennings team, could never have been chosen for such an important test of athletic skill. He stood on the touchline shouting encouragement with the full force of his lungs.

There was no score in the first half. After the teams had changed ends, Mr Wilkins, as master on duty, strolled out to the playground to keep an eye on what was going on.

He saw some boys playing football. There was nothing unusual in that, but he noticed that the ball appeared to have little, if any, bounce. Furthermore,

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it was of an unusual colour and somewhat larger in size than a conventional football should be.

So he put on his glasses and looked again. At once his face was suffused with a look of horror. They were playing with the school globe!

Unaware that a replacement had been installed, he strode on to the pitch and halted the play.

"What - what - what in heaven's name do you boys think you're doing?" he boomed.

"Playing football, sir," said Atkinson. "It's an important match to see who—"

"But what do you mean by using the school globe for a football? It's an expensive piece of equipment -a vital teaching-aid. Have you gone mad? How dare you engage in such an act of wanton vandalism?"

The tirade lasted some while, thus using up valuable time of the remaining minutes of the final half.

When the master had finished expostulating and had run out of breath, Venables said, "It's all right, sir. We've got a new globe now. The Head said we could do what we liked with the old one."

"Did he indeed! He told you to play football with it?"

"Well, not exactly, sir. He told us to get rid of it, but as it was an important match, we thought—"

"Yes, yes, yes," Mr Wilkins broke in. "But if you wanted to play a match why didn't you use a proper football? There are half a dozen ready for use in the sports pavilion."

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Jennings shook his head. "We didn't want an ordi-nary football, sir - that wouldn't have done at all. We were playing with the globe because it's the trophy to decide whether Venables was in the right for pouring the tea over me."

"And whoever wins keeps the ball to prove it," croaked Darbishire, hoarse from cheering his side.

Mr Wilkins hadn't the faintest idea what the boys were talking about. Having been absent from breakfast the previous morning he knew nothing of the feud that had developed.

"I've had enough of this stupid nonsense," he said. "If the Head says the globe is no use, I suggest you get rid of it and go indoors and get ready for school."

Mr Wilkins strode off the playground, shaking his head in bewilderment at the baffling behaviour of boys and the extraordinary way in which their minds appeared to work.

Thus ended the famous trial-by-combat match. Score, nil - nil.

And as the match had ended in a goal-less draw it was agreed that honours were even and both sides were in the right. Jennings and Venables were equally innocent and equally guilty of blame in the affair of the scalding second cup of tea.

The globe, being of no further use, ended up on the rubbish dump waiting for Robinson, the school cleaner, to put a match to his monthly bonfire.

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CHAPTER 6

THE MISER'S MATTRESS

It was with some hesitation that Jennings and Darbishire approached Oaktree Cottage on Saturday afternoon.

Miss Thorpe would have received their letter of apology, of course, but would that be enough to stave off the indignation she must still be feeling at their deplorable efforts to distribute her leaflets?

"She's bound to go up the wall a bit," Jennings observed as they made their way to the village. "It's not only the mess, it's the waste of all that paper, too."

"Yes, and I can't even give her the elastic band back," Darbishire replied. "I was just stretching it over my head for something to do, and suddenly it shot off into space and I couldn't find it."

"Just the sort of thing you would do," Jennings grumbled. "You seem to think there's nothing more to life than stretching rubber bands over everything you can get hold of. Still, it's too late now. We'll just have to see what she says."

"Perhaps we could make up for it by collecting more

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junk than anyone else did last Saturday. That ought to put her in a good mood."

However, their fears were unjustified. To their surprise, Miss Thorpe welcomed them warmly and brushed aside their faltering apologies.

"That's quite all right. In fact, it was a blessing in disguise," she assured them. "When I came to think it over, I realised it was a mistake to waste all that paper - even though it was recycled - on sending out leaflets. We all have a duty to conserve raw materials."

Jennings gave a hollow laugh. "You try telling that to Mr Wilkins," he said with feeling. "He ticked me off yesterday for only writing one page for my geography essay. I told him I was saving paper to stop trees being cut down, and he said it was just a feeble excuse for not doing my prep."

Darbishire nodded in agreement. "Just like Old Wilkie - er, Mr Wilkins, I mean. If you ask me, I reckon he's a bit of a tree vandal, on the quiet. Think of all the paper we'd save if he never set us any written work." He thought for a moment and added, "Our wrists wouldn't ache so much, either."

Miss Thorpe declined to comment on this ingenious excuse for not putting pen to paper. She had already decided that a few posters displayed in the Linbury General Stores and Post Office and on the church notice-board would be the best way of getting her message across. This decision had been strengthened

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in the past few days by offensive remarks from resi-dents in Marina Gardens when they found out where the leaflets had come from.

She had bought some more dustbin liners since the boys' last visit so, suitably provided, Jennings and Darbishire set out to make amends for their unfortunate mishap the previous week.

"I vote we try the old railway line," Jennings sug-gested as they left the cottage. "Temple said there was a lot of stuff they didn't have time to collect because of having to report to Old Wilkie."

They followed a footpath through a ploughed field on Arrowsmith's farm, climbed a stile and slithered down an embankment on to the overgrown railway track at the bottom of the slope. The cutting, running straight between the banks for a quarter of a mile, was the only sign that once, years ago, trains had chugged along the little valley on shiny steel rails. Now, rails and sleepers were gone and Nature had taken over.

Left to itself, the old railway line would have become an ideal wild-life reserve. Bushes and trees grew untended on the banks overlooking the grass-covered track. Weeds clogged the neglected drainage ditch.

As the seasons changed, there would be primroses and violets on the banks and birds nesting in the haw-thorn bushes. Later, there would be blackberries and rose hips. There were rabbits and hedgehogs, badgers and foxes, butterflies and glow-worms. Everywhere,

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wild flowers and wild animals were looking after themselves in their natural habitat.

There was, however, one blot on this pastoral land-scape: it had become a convenient rubbish dump for local residents unable, or unwilling, to take their household refuse to the official tip provided by the Dunhambury District Council.

Admittedly, the tip was five miles away, and this was often quoted as an excuse for getting rid of some clapped-out washing-machine or punctured car tyre, too big to fit into the dustbin.

Jennings looked about him, taking in the scene, and pointed to a tree half-way up the bank. "Hey, look, Darbi! There's a squirrel!"

Darbishire giggled as an old memory flickered into his mind. "I wonder if it's going to Land's End?"

"Eh? What are you on about?""Oh, nothing. It's just something that happened in

class with Old Wilkie. You weren't there. You were outside, rolling the concrete on the playground."

Temple had certainly been right in reporting that a great deal of rubbish remained to be collected, and for some while Jennings and Darbishire wandered about filling their sacks with plastic bags, milk bottles and various samples of household waste.

Further along the track they came across a mildewed mattress, half concealed in the undergrowth.

"Too big for us to muck about with," Jennings

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decided. "Better leave it. Miss Thorpe can get the dustbin men to come and take it away."

Darbishire sniffed, wrinkled his nose and poked the offending bedding with a stick. "Well past its sell-by date. Doesn't smell very ozone-friendly to me," he said. "Could be something inside it, though. Bank notes, for instance."

"Bank notes? Huh, you're joking!"He was joking, but he wasn't going to admit it."No, honestly! Someone once told me about a mys-

terious old miser. He was ever so rich, but he lived in a dingy garret with a leaky roof. And when he died nobody could find where he'd hidden his money. It was most mysterious, everyone was mystified, nobody could solve the mysterious mystery."

"That's the fifty billionth time you've told me it was mysterious," Jennings complained. "Get to the point."

"Well, years afterwards when they were throwing out all his broken-down furniture and stuff, his mattress got caught in the banisters and split open. And what do you think?"

"You needn't tell me, I've guessed," Jennings said in scornful tones. "They found all his money in the mattress. Right?"

"Well, yes, but what was most mysterious—""That's an old story. I heard it, too. Nothing special

about it. I bet it's happened hundreds of times."

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The story-teller sighed. Jennings always spoiled his yarns by refusing to be impressed.

Darbishire had a lively imagination. Sometimes, in his make-believe world, he cast himself as the chief actor in some improbable adventure. At other times he would embroider some real-life incident with fantastic details of what might have happened until even he was unable to sort out the fact from the fantasy.

So, as he wandered up the track filling his dustbin liner with junk, he forgot about Professor Darbishire, MA, PhD, Dip-something, collecting Stone Age cook-ing pots. Instead, for the next half-hour his thoughts were focused on the life story and untimely death of the mysterious miser. It was no good telling Jennings: he wouldn't listen. But perhaps, later on, somebody else would!

When their bags were full the boys made their way back to Oaktree Cottage where they found Miss Thorpe in the barn feeding her tropical fish.

"Well done, boys!" she trilled like a robin defending its habitat when they dumped their sacks and told her about the mattress. "I've been making myself a regular nuisance to the District Council about the old railway line. They've promised to send a lorry to clear it, but nothing's happened, so far." She put down a packet of fish food on a shelf beside the aquarium and said, "You haven't met my fish, have you - a recent acquisition. I'm planning to move them into the cottage when

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I've made a bit more room. Come and have a look at them."

It was growing dark inside the barn, though a small fluorescent light-tube was glowing above the fish tank. A switch near the door operated this light and the immersion heater, which was always kept on. In the same socket, a separate plug controlled the barn's main light in the ceiling.

Miss Thorpe switched on the main light and the boys moved closer to inspect the tank.

It was a well-stocked aquarium, four feet in length, and Miss Thorpe was keen to point out its features and identify the various breeds of fish. There were angel fish, guppy, catfish and clown loach, with a range of tropical plants growing up through the gravel on the floor of the tank. She explained photosynthesis, the process by which the plants absorb carbon dioxide and exude oxygen.

"That's the aerator at work," she said, pointing to where a continual stream of bubbles was rising to the surface. "And just over there is the immersion heater. I'm so glad I had electricity laid on when I bought the barn. Everything depends on the pump so we can keep the water at the same temperature these little fellows would enjoy in a tropical river."

"How warm does it have to be?" Darbishire wanted to know.

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"Mid-seventies. I set the thermostat at seventy-five and they seem to like it."

"Seventy-five degrees centigrade?" Jennings queried.

"What!" Miss Thorpe's squawk of horror was the croak of a corncrake in distress. "Centigrade! Good gracious, no! What an idea! Fahrenheit, of course. I want live fish, not boiled ones."

"Sorry, I didn't know," Jennings said humbly.They watched as she sprinkled a measure offish

food on to the surface of the water. "They need feeding every day," she explained. "Anything they haven't eaten in ten minutes or so has to be scooped out so it doesn't go bad and foul the water."

Miss Thorpe was seldom away from home, so the daily feeding of the fish was usually no problem. But the following Saturday, she told them, she had arranged to visit her sister in Kent where she would be staying the night.

"I shall take Jason with me, but I shall have to find someone to look after the fish - and the cottage, too," she said. "I know several people in Marina Gardens, but I hesitate to ask favours in that quarter just at the moment. Some of the residents have been most impolite after what happened to their gardens last week. They seemed to think it was all my fault."

The boys frowned in sympathy and looked down at their feet. Perhaps it wasn't entirely Miss Thorpe's fault, they thought.

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Jennings was struck by a bright idea. Here was their chance to make amends for the Marina Gardens fiasco.

"We'll feed the fish for you next Saturday," he offered. "We've got to come down here in any case collecting junk, so it wouldn't be any trouble."

It seemed the obvious solution to her problem, so she readily agreed and showed them the correct amount of fish food to sprinkle into the tank, and how to scoop up any remains with the net kept for this purpose.

Then, after watching the fish for a few more min-utes, Darbishire said, "We'll have to be going now. The Head said we'd got to be back before dark and it's nearly dark now."

Miss Thorpe followed them out of the barn and switched off the main light, leaving the fluorescent tube burning over the aquarium. She locked the door and hid the key under a loose brick where the boys would find it on their next visit.

As the five sleepers of Dormitory Four undressed that evening, Temple said to Jennings, "How did you get on with your scavenging this afternoon?"

"Fine! Miss Thorpe showed us her fish. We're going to feed them next Saturday when she's away."

Venables snorted and said, "She's asking for trouble, leaving her fish in your hands."

"They won't be in our hands: they'll be in the tank.

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Anyway, I learned a lot about tropical fish this afternoon, so she's got nothing to worry about."

"I wouldn't bet on it!" Venables shook his head doubtfully. "Knowing you and old Darbi, I reckon you'll make a real dog's dinner of it."

Venables, Temple and Atkinson had been vaguely aware of the aquarium when dumping their rubbish sacks in the barn the previous week, but they had not had a chance to inspect it in any detail - thanks to Jason and the contraband leg of chicken.

They listened with interest as Jennings (now a self-styled expert on aquaria) spoke of guppy and catfish, of aerators, filters, thermometers and pumps.

"You have to keep the water warm enough, or they'll die," he explained. "Not too hot, not too cold. Just right."

"What sort of temperature?" Atkinson asked."Seventy-five degrees.""Centigrade?"A look of scorn and incredulity spread over

Jennings' face. It was the sort of look that Mr Wilkins assumed when a boy made a stupid answer in class.

"Centigrade!" he echoed in tones of shocked dis-belief. "You must be as thick as two planks. Anyone but a clueless clodpoll would know it was Fahrenheit, not centigrade." He sighed, and cast despairing eyes at the ceiling in further imitation of Mr Wilkins' reaction to cases of gross stupidity. "Honestly, Atki, I've met

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some boneheads in my time, but I reckon you take the gold medal for addle-brained ignorance."

"Sorry! I only asked," said Atkinson.Darbishire hooted with laughter and called out,

"Hark who's talking! Don't listen, Atki! Jennings asked Miss Thorpe the very same—"

"Shut up, Darbi," Jennings broke in. "I knew it was Fahrenheit, really. I was just thinking about something else at the time."

The five boys got into bed and sat waiting for the duty master to call silence and put out the light.

Temple said to Jennings, "I bet you found plenty of rubbish on the railway line, didn't you?"

"A fair bit," Jennings agreed. "We found an old mattress, and Darbi wanted to split it open to see if it was stuffed with bank notes."

"Just as well he didn't," Temple observed. "If the wind had suddenly got up you'd have had the track plastered with feathers. Like Marina Gardens, only worse."

"It was old Darbi's idea, not mine," Jennings replied. "He was waffling a whole lot of gobblede-gook about some old miser who'd hidden his fortune in a mattress!"

Darbishire frowned importantly and said, "Ah! But there was a lot more to it than that. It was a most mysterious case. Would you like to hear about it?"

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A story, even an improbable one, was a welcome diversion while waiting for lights out.

"Go on, then," said Venables.Darbishire's short-sighted gaze focused on the faces

of his captive audience. Further information about the life and times of the mysterious miser had occurred to him during the course of the afternoon.

"Well, there was this mean old miser who swindled people and kept his money in a mattress. His name was Mr - er - well, quite a lot of people called him Mr Guppy," Darbishire said, as a name from the fish tank flashed into his mind.

"Why did they do that?" Venables asked."Because that was his name. Anyway, his greatest

ambition was to be a millionaire when he died. He told everyone this, including the people who called him Mr Guppy. 'I shall die happy if I die a millionaire,' he told everyone. So he worked hard swindling people, hoarding his money and hiding it in his mattress."

"What did he work at?" Atkinson wanted to know."Swindling people, of course, and counting his

money every day, and getting richer and richer.""Why didn't he keep it in a bank?" demanded

Jennings."He didn't trust banks. He thought they might swin-

dle him. So he went on hoarding his money and getting richer and richer and richer."

Temple yawned. "You've told us that already."

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He'd better get on with it before his audience grew fidgety!

"Every day when he counted his money, he found it was growing nearer and nearer the million pounds he was trying to save. So he went on swindling and hoarding, getting nearer and nearer and nearer—"

"And richer and richer and richer.""Oh, shut up, Venables! Who's telling this story -

you or me?""OK, Darbi, carry on. I was only thinking that if

he'd got to count nearly a million pounds every day, he wouldn't have much time to go out and make any more money."

"Well, he did, anyway. And then at last the great day came." The story-teller paused to make sure everyone was listening. "The day came when he counted his money - and what do you think?"

"He'd got a million," said Jennings."No, no! You're wrong!" Darbishire cried dramati-

cally. "He hadn't got a million! He'd only got nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds and ninety-nine pence. Just one penny short of the target he'd got to reach before he died."

"Is that the end of the story?" asked Temple, settling down in his bed. "Bit of a damp squib, if you want my opinion."

"No, no! Wait! Listen! You haven't heard what

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happened next. It was amazing! It was astonishing! It was astounding!"

Temple sat up in bed again. "Get on with it, then.""Well, as I said, he was one penny short of the

million he needed before he could die happy. So he went out into the street and saw a poor blind beggar standing on the pavement holding out his hat for people to put money in ... And in the old beggar's hat was just one penny.

"It was the swindler's chance to reach his target. Throwing caution to the winds, he snatched the penny from the old man's hat and dashed into the road without looking, shouting, 'Hooray, hooray! I've done it at last! I'm a millionaire! I shall die happy!' "

Darbishire paused and his voice became solemn. "And so he did! . . . For at that moment a passing lorry killed him dead on the spot with the stolen penny in his hand."

There was a short silence. Then Temple said, "Served him right," and Atkinson said, "Did it really happen? Is it true?"

The story-teller shrugged. "It could be true, couldn't it?"

They were still arguing about whether the tale was fact or fiction when Mr Carter came in and put out the light.

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CHAPTER 7

THE NIGGLING DOUBT

Venables' opinion that Jennings and Darbishire would make a hotch-potch of their fish-feeding duties was not, at first, justified, for it was only when they had returned from Oaktree Cottage that the trouble started.

It was now November and daylight was fading early, so the two boys set out for the village soon after lunch as they would have to be back at school before dark.

The old railway track was now looking much tidier than it had on their previous visit. During the past fortnight Mr Pemberton-Oakes had sent out working parties from the senior forms to carry on the work started by the juniors.

And Miss Thorpe had not been idle. Not only had she enlisted the support of several local residents to help in the project, but she had also bullied the Dunhambury District Council into providing lorries to collect the rubbish - biodegradable and otherwise - from her barn and to remove the bulkier objects from the railway line.

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Thus it was that Jennings and Darbishire found very little rubbish to put in their sacks as they wandered along the track. The mildewed mattress had gone, along with the punctured car tyres and rusting washing-machines.

With time on their hands the boys organised boat races with twigs in the overflowing drainage ditch until Darbishire said, "Hadn't we better go and do the fish?"

Jennings looked at his watch. Ten minutes to get to the cottage; say, quarter of an hour for the feeding and clearing up; and ten minutes to get back to school at four thirty.

"OK," he agreed. "We'll have bags of time if we go now."

Back at Oaktree Cottage, they retrieved the key from under the loose brick and let themselves into the barn. The light-tube was glowing over the aquarium, but the daylight was dim around the walls of the outbuilding with its one small window.

Jennings flicked on the main light. "That's better. Now we can see what we're doing."

Everything was in order in the aquarium. Guppy, angel-fish and clown loach swam in the clear water where the pond-weed swayed gently as they glided past. Bubbles rose to the surface as the aerator pumped out its gentle stream of air. The thermometer stood at precisely seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit.

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Jennings sprinkled a generous measure of dried fish food on to the water and the boys watched as the fish swam up and snatched at the floating grains. After about ten minutes, the fish lost interest in the food, so Darbishire dredged the surface with the net and they both stood admiring the graceful swirlings of the fish darting in and out amongst the pond-weed.

The boys were so fascinated that, for a while, they lost count of time and stood watching for longer than they had intended.

Suddenly, Jennings looked at his watch and cried, "Wow! Fossilised fish-hooks! It's nearly twenty to five! Quick, Darbi, quick!"

The prospect of arriving back at school twenty min-utes late threw them into a flurry of wasteful activity. In his haste, Jennings spilt the carton offish food while replacing the lid and had to go down on hands and knees to scoop up the grains.

By the time he had finished, Darbishire was already outside the barn shouting, "Come on, Jen! Get a move on! Old Wilkie's on duty, don't forget. He'll blow his top if we're late for tea!"

"OK. Coming now!" Jennings darted across to the door, flicking off the light switch as he passed by.

To lock the barn and replace the key was the work of a few seconds, after which the boys ran all the way back to school in the gathering darkness.

Mr Wilkins was waiting for them by the playground

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door. "Where on earth have you boys been? I told you to report back by four thirty."

"Sorry, sir. We had to feed the fish."Mr Wilkins knew nothing of this arrangement.

"Fish! What fish? Which fish?""Miss Thorpe's fish, sir. She asked us to.""Did she indeed!" Mr Wilkins grunted. "You took

long enough about it! I'd say you've had time to feed a flock of elephants, coming back twenty minutes late."

"Sorry, sir!""So I should think! You can both report to me after

tea for half an hour's extra work before bed-time. I've had enough nonsense from you two boys, lately. If there's any more trouble I shall -1 shall - well, there'd better not be any trouble - or else!"

But more trouble was yet to come!The tea bell was ringing as Mr Wilkins dismissed

the late-comers and sent them off to wash their hands for tea.

Half-way through the meal a worrying, niggling doubt crept into Jennings' mind. He tried to ignore it, but it went on niggling and completely spoilt his appetite. He said nothing about it at the time, but as soon as tea was over he sought out Darbishire whom he found swapping library books with Bromwich and Atkinson in the common-room.

I

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"Listen, Darbi, this is serious," he began. "Can you remember me switching the light off in the barn when we came out?"

"Yes, I think so. In fact, I'm sure you did.""Ah, but which one did I turn off - the main light or

the aquarium?""No idea! I was outside waiting for you. Can't you

remember?""That's just the trouble -1 can't.""So what! It's not the end of the world. Doesn't

matter, does it?""Of course it matters!" Jennings' voice was shrill

with anxiety. "The two plugs are side by side in the same socket. If I switched off the wrong one, I've turned off the immersion heater in the fish tank."

Darbishire's eyes opened wide and his jaw dropped as the full meaning struck home. "Wow! Oh my good-ness! Fossilised fish-hooks! That means the water's been getting colder ever since we left." He uttered a little moan of despair. "And it'll go on getting colder and colder all through the night and all tomorrow and—"

"All right, all right! I know that. You don't have to tell me."

Bromwich and Atkinson, guessing that something sensational was in the wind, put down their library books and came closer, demanding details.

"It's Miss Thorpe's tropical fish," Darbishire explained. "We're looking after them while she's

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away, and now Jennings says he's turned the heating off and they'll die if the water goes cold."

"I didn't say I had. I said I might have done," Jennings defended himself.

"Wow! You must be stark raving crazy! What did you want to do a thing like that for?" demanded Bromwich.

"It was an accident. There are two switches, you see, side by side. One does the light and the other does the fish tank."

"Yes, but all the same!" Bromwich pursed his lips and shook his head. "How hot has the water got to be, then?"

"Seventy-five degrees.""Centigrade?""Tut! Don't be such a clodpoll, Bromo!" Atkinson

spoke with the conviction of the expert who knows what he's talking about. "Everyone but a thick-headed clot knows its Fahrenheit. What we don't know," the self-styled expert confessed, "is how long it'll be before they're all dead."

Darbishire gulped and swallowed hard. "For all we know, they're dead already. Frozen stiff!"

More boys drifted up as the news spread round the common-room and Jennings found himself surrounded by a crowd who, though sorry for his plight, had little sympathy for what they considered his irresponsible behaviour.

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"Why didn't you look to see which one you'd turned off?" Temple demanded, when abreast of the facts.

"I didn't have time. I didn't think. We were late and I rushed out in a hurry and there were these two switches and—"

"It all depends how long they can stay alive after the water's gone cold," said Rumbelow. "Does anybody know?"

Nobody did.Martin-Jones said, "I knew a man who kept tropical

fish, and there was a power cut and he had to keep putting hot towels and blankets round the tank."

"And did that work?"Martin-Jones shrugged. "I don't know. Shouldn't

think so. The next time I saw him he said he was keeping goldfish in his garden pond."

Horror-stories of similar disasters spread round the group.

"I knew a family who switched off their freezer by mistake when they went on holiday," said Bromwich. "And when they came back—"

"Ah, but that's just the opposite of what Jennings has done," Temple pointed out. "They switched off so the freezer got hotter; old Jen's switched off so the tank's got colder. If you want my opinion—"

But nobody wanted Temple's opinion, everyone being more eager to contribute his own horror-story than to listen to other people's.

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The horror-stories brought no consolation to Jen-nings and Darbishire, both of whom were almost distraught with worry.

"It's not only the fish, it's Miss Thorpe," wailed Darbishire. "She trusted us. What's she going to say when she comes back and finds all those bodies floating about?"

"You'll have to pay for them," said Venables. "Bet they cost ever so much. Hundreds of pounds, I shouldn't wonder." Sorry though he was for Jennings and Darbishire he couldn't help adding, "I said you'd make a dog's dinner of it, didn't I? I told you!"

Jennings hardly heard him. He was standing, tense with worry, racking his brain trying to recall his hurried exit from the barn. He remembered shooting out his arm towards the socket as he ran past. But after that - nothing!

A few moments later he said, "I'll have to go down to the cottage. I might be in time to save them if I go right away."

"How can you go? Old Wilkie will never let you out after dark. And anyway—" Darbishire broke off as a further complication occurred to him. "And anyway, old Sir told us to report to him for a punishment after tea, and we haven't done that yet."

"I shan't ask Old Wilkie, I shall ask Mr Carter. He's much more likely to say 'yes'."

"But supposing—"

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"You go and report to Old Wilkie, Darbi. Say I'm coming, but I've got held up, or something, and I'm on my way. If Mr Carter says I can go, I'll be there and back in twenty minutes."

"I dare say, but what if—?""Oh, go on, Darbi! Don't hang about, there's no

time to lose. Think of all those poor fish dying from hypo - hypo-what's-it."

"Hypothetical?" suggested Darbishire."Hypothermia," corrected Venables with a superior

smirk.Jennings hurried from the room in search of Mr

Carter while Darbishire headed for the staff-room to report to the master on duty and the rest of the group drifted away to resume their interrupted activities.

Blotwell, the youngest of all, went off to the tuck-box room to look for his friend Binns who had not been present in the common-room while the mind-boggling topic was being discussed. Briefly, he outlined what had happened, but his account was somewhat garbled and left Binns with only a hazy notion of the facts.

"What do the fish need the light left on all night for?" Binns wanted to know. "Surely they can find their way round the tank in the dark!"

"It's not the light, it's the heat," Blotwell explained. "Jennings cut the electricity off before tea and he reckons they'll be on their last legs by now."

"Fish haven't got any legs," Binns objected.

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"Well, flapping their fins to keep themselves warm - or whatever fish do. You don't seem to realise how serious it is." Blotwell searched his mind for some telling example to bring home the full horror of the situation.

"Look, it's like this. Supposing you were lying down in a nice, warm bath and the water began to get cold. What would you do?"

"I'd turn the hot tap on.""Yes, but supposing you couldn't be bothered to sit

up, so you tried to turn it on with your big toe, and somehow, quite by chance, your toe got stuck in the tap so you couldn't get it out. You'd be trapped."

"I'd shout for help," Binns decided."Nobody would hear you. You were alone in the

house. They'd all gone off to the cinema.""How do you know where they'd gone?""I just said supposing. You'd be stuck there hour

after hour - all night perhaps - till they got back.""Must have been a long film, then.""Yes, it was. Ever so long. And they missed the last

bus and had to walk. And it was a bitterly cold night, snowing hard and the bath water started to freeze. And by the time they got home—"

"What's all this got to do with Miss Thorpe's fish?" Binns demanded impatiently.

"Ah! I was coming to that! D'you remember Old Wilkie telling us in class about a band of explorers in

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Siberia? They were digging for fossils and stuff and they came across a huge mammoth, thousands of years old, frozen solid in a vast block of ice."

Binns nodded. He remembered the lesson well."Well, when they got back afterwards—""Who? The Siberian explorers?""No, you clodpoll. The people who'd been to the

cinema. When they got back to the house—" Blotwell winced, shuddered and drew in his breath sharply. "When they got back, a gruesome spectacle met their eyes - Master N. Binns Esquire, trapped by his big toe, frozen solid in a bath of ice like a prehistoric mammoth."

Binns tapped his forehead. "You're mad! What's my bath water got to do with fossilised mammoths?"

"Don't you see?" Young Binns could be pretty slow on the uptake at times, Blotwell thought. "I was just trying to explain why Miss Thorpe's fish, shivering in the tank, would be like you, stuck in a cold bath."

Binns thought for a moment, then shook his head. "Not the same thing at all," he argued. "For one thing, fish haven't got any toes, so how could they get them stuck in the tap? Honestly, Blotters, you do talk an awful lot of rot."

"Maybe I do," Blotwell agreed. "But only because it's the only way I can get a shrimp-witted clodpoll like you to understand anything."

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CHAPTER 8

OUT OF BOUNDS

There was no reply when Jennings knocked on Mr Carter's study door. He was about to turn the handle and look inside when Nuttall, coming up the stairs, said, "If you're looking for Mr Carter, you'll be unlucky. He's just gone out in his car."

This was a setback. For now, Jennings realised, he would have to approach Mr Wilkins for permission to return to the cottage, and Mr Wilkins was almost certain to say "no".

But would he? He was, at heart, a kind man, even though he lacked understanding. Surely he would have some sympathy for the threatened fish, and also for Miss Thorpe's distress at finding her aquarium devas-tated - to say nothing of the expense of replacing her specimens, as Venables had pointed out.

Determined to appeal to the master's better nature, Jennings made his way downstairs to the staff-room. As he approached, the door opened and Darbishire emerged shaking his head gloomily.

"Old Sir's in a frantic bate," he reported. "He's set

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us both half an hour's work and you've got to report to him right away and explain why you're late."

"OK," said Jennings, bracing himself for the ordeal."Did you find Mr Carter?""No, he's gone out.""Oh, fish-hooks," Darbishire groaned. "That puts

the tin lid on it. You'll never get permission to go from old Sir. He's just about to blow his top."

Jennings shrugged and knocked on the staff-room door.

"Come in!" bellowed an angry voice from inside the room.

The boy entered and said, "I'm ever so sorry I'm late, sir, but something rather serious has happened. You see—"

"No excuses, thank you very much! I've set you some work. Darbishire will tell you what you've got to do. Go and get on with it."

"Yes, sir, of course, sir, but - er - well, have I got to do the work now?"

"Of course you'll do it now. You don't imagine I'm expecting you to do it next Pancake Day!"

"No, sir, but I can't start just at the moment because—"

"Can't start! Why can't you start?""Because of Miss Thorpe's fish, sir. She asked us to

feed them.""You've done that already. You told me so before

tea."

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"Yes, I know, sir, only I can't remember whether I switched off when we came out or whether I didn't, and if I did, I can't remember which one it was I did, and which one it was I didn't."

Mr Wilkins stared at him as though he were speaking some unknown language.

"Which one you did, which one you didn't" he echoed. "You're talking gibberish, boy! I don't know what you're blethering about."

"No, sir. Well, it's like this, as you might say, or rather, to put it another way ..."

The faltering explanation went stumbling on with-out ever getting to the heart of the matter. In his state of nervous confusion, and with Mr Wilkins glowering at him from across the room, Jennings' mind seized up and the right words wouldn't come. Instead of the clear explanation he was trying to give, he merely confused the master with a jumble of unrelated facts.

Mr Wilkins couldn't make head or tail of this garbled explanation about switches on and switches off, plugs, sockets, and hot and cold water at seventy-five degrees. Like Binns, a few minutes earlier, he got the impression that Jennings was worried because the fish couldn't see their way round the tank in the dark.

He knew nothing about Miss Thorpe's aquarium, having paid little attention to it on his brief visit to the barn two weeks before. He had vaguely noticed some fish in a tank and assumed that they were cold-water

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specimens like goldfish, or even the minnows and tadpoles which the boys were fond of collecting in the summer.

It has been said that Mr Wilkins was, at heart, a humane and kindly man, though this aspect of his character was not easy to discern beneath his blustering exterior. Had he realised the full extent of the problem, he might well have done something about it, for Miss Thorpe was a friendly neighbour for whom he had some respect.

But, listening with only half an ear to Jennings' incoherent ramblings, any soft-hearted feelings he may have had were buried beneath his suspicions that these futile excuses were part of some deep-laid plot to get the better of him and avoid doing the punishment that he had just set. This "cock-and-bull" story about feeding fish at this time of night was simply preposterous.

"Of course you can't go out again," Mr Wilkins snorted when the lame excuses had tailed away into silence. "The very idea! You know perfectly well that no boy is allowed out alone after dark. It's a school rule."

"But you don't understand, sir. It's urgent. I must go."

"Must go!" the master barked angrily. "Are you giving me orders? How dare you question my instructions!"

"But, sir—""Quiet, boy!" bellowed Mr Wilkins. "You heard

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what I said. Go to your classroom and get on with the work I set."

For a moment Jennings hesitated. Mr Wilkins pointed to the door. "Out, boy, out!"

Outside in the corridor Jennings almost wept with frustration . . . and made up his mind!

It was dark on the road to the village and a chill November wind was blowing. There wasn't much traffic, but every now and again Jennings had to draw in to the shelter of the hedge as a car went by lighting up the road ahead, or blinding him with its beam as it approached.

He should have brought a torch, he scolded himself. There was no footpath for protection and it was asking for trouble to be traipsing about alone at that hour of the evening.

Darbishire had been appalled when Jennings had told him he was going.

"It's madness! Suppose you get caught?" he had argued. "It'd be bad enough if you'd just sloped off without saying anything, but it'll be ten times worse now you've asked Sir and he's said 'no'."

"I'll have to risk that. I'll settle for any sort of punishment when I get back, but I must go and see if they're all right. Miss Thorpe would never forgive us if they all died." Jennings shook his head sadly. "I'd never forgive myself, either."

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Darbishire nodded. "I suppose so. And think how Venables would take the mickey. He always said we'd make a dog's dinner of it."

So the decision was made . . . And now Jennings was hurrying along the Linbury road, tense with anxiety. His heart was thudding. He flinched as an owl flew hedge-high across his path. In the distance a fox barked somewhere on Arrowsmith's farm. There was no one about. Apart from the occasional passing car, the road was eerily quiet.

Soon he could see the lights of the village, and felt a little better. Oaktree Cottage was on the outskirts and he hadn't much further to go. As he drew nearer, he noticed that the cottage was in darkness, but until he reached the garden he wouldn't be able to see if any light was showing through the small barn window.

He ran the last hundred yards and let himself in at the garden gate. A car was parked nearby, but he paid no attention to it, for now he could see a light inside the barn and hurried towards it.

But was it the main ceiling-light or was it the fish tank? He retrieved the key from under the loose brick and opened the door.

He gasped with relief. The strip light over the aquarium was burning and bubbles were rising to the surface. Crossing the barn, he saw that the thermometer still registered seventy-five degrees and the fish were swimming contentedly in the tepid water.

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So he hadn't turned off the wrong switch! Every-thing was normal. He needn't have bothered to come - except to restore his own peace of mind.

He paused for a few moments regaining his breath. Now, with an easy conscience, he could go back and face whatever punishment lay in store. He went out, locked the door and returned the key to its hiding-place.

The garden path led past the cottage to the gate, and he had gone only a few yards when a light flashed on in an upstairs room in the cottage. A few seconds later it was switched off, and this was followed by a light appearing downstairs which, in turn, was extinguished almost immediately — but not before the shadow of a man was silhouetted on the closed curtain of the living-room window.

Jennings stood stock-still, his heart pounding and his hands trembling. It wasn't little Miss Thorpe; it was the shadow of a tall man crossing the room towards the kitchen.

There was only one explanation - a burglar!Jennings hardly dared to breathe, terrified of being

discovered, possibly attacked.What should he do? Make a dash for the gate and

get on to the road before the man came out? There was a telephone kiosk a short distance towards the village. In normal circumstances, the proper thing to do would be to dial 999 and inform the police of a break-in at Oaktree Cottage with the intruder still on the premises.

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But the circumstances were not normal. He would have to give his name and address and wait for the police to arrive. Any chance of getting back to school undetected would vanish in the inquiries that would follow. Even so, his first duty was to Miss Thorpe, whatever might happen afterwards.

But the decision about what to do next was out of Jennings' hands, for the intruder, having crossed the kitchen, was letting himself out through the back door by torch-light a few yards from where the boy was standing.

Jennings shrank back into the shrubbery trying to evade the man's torch beam as it swept round the gar-den. In his haste, he tripped over an exposed tree-root and fell with a noise that set the undergrowth around him swishing and creaking.

A man's voice rang out. "Who's that? Come out from there!"

The torch beam swept over the swaying bushes and focused on the figure crouching on the ground beneath.

"So it's you, Jennings!" said the voice.The voice was the voice of Mr Carter.When Jennings had left for Oaktree Cottage, Darbi-

shire sat down to work on the detention exercise that Mr Wilkins had set them. The punishment consisted of reading a chapter in their science text

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book and writing answers to the questions that followed.

Darbishire was keenly interested, for the chapter described how most scientists now held the view that the universe was continually expanding, so that stars and galaxies were moving further and further away from one another.

This raised a problem, Darbishire thought, and his mind drifted away from the text book to the world of his imagination.

If these scientific geezers were right, it meant that the aliens from Outer Space would soon be too far away to stage an exploratory visit to the Earth. It would take so long for them to get here that they would have died from old age before they arrived.

It wouldn't be very pleasant, he thought, wrinkling his nose in distaste, to open up a capsule from some distant star to find the remains of a crew that had expired several thousand years ago.

H'm! Perhaps the bulging-browed inhabitants of Planet X with their super-human intelligence had already foreseen this time-lag and had overcome it. Perhaps they were already here, masquerading as human beings! It was a sobering thought.

Forgetting the chapter he was supposed to be studying, Darbishire's daydream veered off to a science-fiction story in a book he had borrowed from Martin-Jones. It was all about a race of evil

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aliens from Outer Space who had infiltrated the human race and planned to take over the Earth by posing as human beings. Their disguise was almost impossible to penetrate, and they moved about freely, accepted on all sides as genuine men and women. Only a tiny handful of people on Earth were gifted with the special insight needed to see through their disguise and expose them as imposters.

It was quite ridiculous, Darbishire told himself. Laughable, really, and impossible to believe outside the pages of science fiction . . . But it was fascinating to think about! It was mind-boggling!

Darbishire's make-believe started ticking over. Sup-posing that he — Charles Edwin Jeremy Darbishire -was one of this tiny minority of trained observers able to see through the aliens' disguises and unmask their evil designs! . . . H'm! Whom should he choose to expose?

At this point, Darbishire's imagination boggled into over-drive and he pictured himself confronting Mr Pemberton-Oakes in his study.

"Sir, I have reason to believe that Mr Wilkins is an alien agent from Planet Z. He has been programmed to enslave you and the boys of your school."

The headmaster leaped with shock and clutched at the bookcase for support. "Good heavens! I can hardly believe it. To think that a trusted member of my staff—"

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"Have you finished that work yet, Darbishire?"With a guilty start, Darbishire looked up to see the

imposter from Planet Z, alias Mr Wilkins, standing in the doorway of the classroom. He was being a little unfair to his form master, he thought. Even a gifted alien-catcher wouldn't put Mr Wilkins on his list of suspects. Old Wilkie was an earth-bound sort of person if ever there was one!

"I - er - I haven't quite finished the written part yet, sir," he confessed.

"How much have you done?""Well, I haven't quite started it yet, either, sir. I got

so interested in the bit about galaxies and stuff that I - sort of- got carried away and went on reading."

"Did you indeed! And where's Jennings?""Jennings, sir?" Darbishire queried, looking round

the room to see if, by any chance, his friend might be lurking behind the book-case or crouching under the table. Having carried out his inspection, he reported the result: "Jennings isn't here, sir."

"I can see that, you silly little boy. Where's he gone? What's he doing?"

Stuck for an answer, Darbishire shrugged helplessly and looked blank. It wasn't his job to do Mr Wilkins' detective work for him.

Frowning, the master strode off to look for the absentee in other parts of the building.

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CHAPTER 9

FACING THE CAMERA

Darbishire would not, in any case, have been able to give an accurate answer to Mr Wilkins' questions, for he supposed that Jennings would, at that time, have been hurrying back to school from the village.

This was not so: for at that moment Jennings was staring in dazzled bewilderment into the beam of Mr Carter's torch as he scrambled out from the shelter of the bushes.

"Oh, sir," he gasped with relief, "I thought you were a burglar."

"I see! And may I ask what you are doing here and whether you have permission to be out?"

"Well, sir, it was like this ..."It was easier to explain matters to Mr Carter, for he

listened attentively and seemed to understand -though not to condone - Jennings' reasons for being out of bounds at that hour of the evening.

"It was a stupid thing to do and a serious breach of school rules," Mr Carter said, when the explanation had run its course. "It's extremely dangerous for a boy

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to be out on his own after dark. Anything might have happened."

"I know, sir. Sorry, sir," the culprit mumbled."And quite unnecessary. I should have made sure

that all was well in the barn when I'd finished checking the cottage."

"I didn't know you were coming down here, sir. I was going to ask you for permission, but you'd gone out when I tried to find you."

There was nothing unusual about Mr Carter's presence in the cottage. Miss Thorpe, like most householders, was worried about the possibility of her premises being burgled during her absence, so, having arranged with the boys to look after the fish, she had telephoned Mr Carter to ask him to keep an eye on her property until she returned.

This, Mr Carter had done. Having found that all was well indoors, his only surprise had been to find a youthful intruder hiding in the garden.

"Come along, Jennings." He led the way out of the garden to where his car was parked near the gate.

Jennings was in a dejected frame of mind when he arrived back at school. True, he had done his duty to Miss Thorpe, but there was bound to be an investigation.

Darbishire was on the look-out for him and plied him with questions.

"Was everything all right?" he demanded.

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"No, it wasn't," Jennings said, grimly."Oh, fish-hooks! You mean they're dead?""Dead! What are you nattering about? Who's

dead?""The fish, of course.""Oh, the fish\" Jennings heaved a deep sigh. "I

thought you meant me\ Yes, the fish are OK. Nothing to worry about. It's what happened afterwards - it got me so rattled I'd almost forgotten about the fish."

There was, of course, trouble! Jennings had often found himself summoned to the headmaster's study to account for his misdeeds, but this time the crime on the charge-sheet was more serious than usual.

For nearly half an hour on Sunday morning he stood in front of the headmaster's desk, shuffling his weight from one foot to the other while Mr Pemberton-Oakes in his role of both judge and jury considered the evidence for the prosecution and for the defence.

He took pains to be fair to the accused. He agreed that the defendant had been put in a position of trust by Miss Thorpe and would have failed in his duty if any harm had befallen her aquarium. He could also understand why a boy as scatterbrained as the accused couldn't remember which light switch he had turned off.

But that was no excuse for disobeying the duty master's orders and breaking bounds after dark. Did he not realise that, quite apart from the breach of

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school rules, he had acted very foolishly? He might have had an accident. Imagine the shock which the staff would have felt if a telephone call from the police had been their first intimation that a pupil had gone absent without leave!

After the judge (Mr Pemberton-Oakes) had summed up the evidence, the jury (also Mr Pemberton-Oakes) returned a unanimous verdict of Guilty.

The sentence was then pronounced. There would be no more football for the defendant for the rest of the term. Instead, he would be set various tasks such as sweeping up leaves, weeding flower-beds and - er -other jobs of that sort (for on the spur of the moment the headmaster couldn't think of any) while his colleagues were enjoying themselves on the football field.

The punishment was fair enough, Jennings had to admit when he left the study. But he was heartbroken about the football ban. He had missed two chances of being chosen for the Second XI team after the Marina Gardens fiasco when he had been sentenced to scavenge rubbish for a fortnight. Now, he had no chance whatever of being picked.

Darbishire did his best to cheer his friend up. "Per-haps I should have gone to the cottage instead of you," he said during lunch on Sunday. "If I'd got caught and been stopped from football, it wouldn't have mattered so much."

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"Huh! If it was you, they'd have done the punish-ment the other way round," Jennings said with deep feeling. "They'd have made you play football three times a day because they know you don't like it."

But Jennings soon recovered from his disappoint-ment and even took a pride in the manual work he was obliged to do every afternoon. And for the next two weeks the school settled down to its usual pattern of work and play.

The only break in the routine occurred when Mr Openshaw of Messrs Scuttlewell and Openshaw, Photographers (Weddings and Studio Portraits a Speciality) drove over from Dunhambury to take the school's annual photograph.

This event normally took place in the summer term, but a bout of chicken-pox the previous July had resulted in a number of boys being confined to the sick-room and unable to appear before the camera.

"We'll have to postpone it until next term," the headmaster had decided. "It's a pity, as some of the senior boys will have left by then, but it can't be helped."

So, as Mr Openshaw set up his photographic equip-ment, boys set out benches and chairs in the customary manner and the school came out on to the playground for a welcome break from morning school.

Form One, with knees scrubbed clean for the occa-sion, sat on rugs in the foreground; behind them was a row of chairs for masters and other members of staff.

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Senior boys stood behind the chairs and the middle-ranking forms balanced themselves unsteadily, two feet above ground-level, on a row of wobbling benches in the rear.

For a group photograph of such width (for it com-prised about ninety people, all told), Mr Openshaw used a camera which swivelled round from side to side through an arc wide enough to take in the whole body of the school in a single panoramic sweep. The movement of the camera was controlled by clockwork, and Mr Openshaw warned his sitters of the importance of keeping still while the camera was in motion.

"It moves round quite slowly," he told them when the school had taken their places. "Most of you have seen it in action before, but, if not, remember the rule: don't move, don't sneeze, don't bat an eyelid, don't scratch your nose if it itches. The slightest movement while you're facing the camera can ruin the whole photograph."

Several boys whose noses had not been itching, now felt an uncontrollable urge to scratch. Mr Openshaw gave them a few moments to get comfortable. Then he said, "All looking happy! Nice bright smiles! Everybody ready!"

They were all ready and looking happy - apart from Jennings who was still indoors looking for his outdoor shoes. They weren't in his locker; they weren't in anybody else's locker. So how could he go outside in

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his house-shoes to take his place in the back row next to Darbishire, when the rule plainly said that outdoor shoes must be worn for the photograph!

They'd been in his locker last night, he felt sure of that. But, somehow, in the bustle of getting ready to go outside, some clumsy class-mate had sent them skimming across the boot-room in the search for his own footwear.

Through the boot-room window, Jennings heard the hum of voices die away as the school settled down in their places and Mr Openshaw made sure that all was ready.

Jennings was tense with alarm. He mustn't be late, he mustn't be absent! He'd been in enough trouble lately, and didn't want to risk being set any more punishments. And, besides, he was as keen as anyone on being in the school photograph . . . Where on earth had his wretched shoes got to?

It was a stupid rule, anyway, he fumed, turning away from the lockers. Feet never came out in school photos, so why should it matter if he was wearing the wrong shoes?

Just then, he saw his left shoe behind the radiator, and a moment later his other shoe came to light outside in the corridor. Just in time, he thought, putting on his shoes in frantic haste. He wouldn't be late after all!

He rushed out to the playground and jumped on to the end of the nearest bench, just as the clockwork

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whirred into action and the camera started to revolve on its axis. Within seconds, Jennings' image had been recorded for evermore as the boy on the extreme left in the back row.

The camera moved slowly on. Parslow, an older boy standing next to him, muttered without moving his lips, "Get out, Jennings! You're in the wrong place: this is Form Four. Your lot are down at the other end."

Parslow was right, Jennings realised. Darbishire would be keeping a place for him amongst his class-mates on the Form Three bench. Perhaps there was still time to join them. And now that the camera had passed him and was approaching the mid-point of its arc, there was surely no harm in his moving.

So he jumped down from the bench and scurried at full speed behind the shield of motionless bodies till he reached the other end of the row. Sure enough, there was a vacant space next to Darbishire, so he jumped up and stood beside him.

Darbishire was surprised by Jennings' late arrival, but he couldn't say anything for the lens was moving towards the end of its semi-circular sweep. It focused on Darbishire, then on Jennings and seconds later switched itself off ... Jennings' likeness was captured for all time as the boy on the extreme right in the back row.

The school relaxed, rose from chairs, jumped off

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perches and scratched noses that had been twitching for the previous thirty seconds.

"Why on earth were you so late?" Darbishire demanded as they helped to carry the benches back indoors. "I'd given you up. I thought you weren't coming."

"I nearly didn't. I couldn't find my shoes. It was just starting when I got outside, so I jumped up on the bench next to Parslow."

"But they were all fourth-formers down at that end."

"Yes, I know. That's why I got down and came along to join you."

Darbishire pulled a face. "Bit risky, wasn't it? Sup-pose you'd been spotted."

"I couldn't have been," Jennings pointed out. "I ran along behind the benches. Out of sight. Everyone was looking at the camera, so no one could possibly have seen me."

"There could be a row about it," Darbishire observed, uneasily.

"How could there be? No one will ever know, will they?"

Jennings dismissed the incident from his mind as he went indoors to change back into his house shoes. It didn't occur to him until later in the term that what he had done might have had an effect on the annual school photograph which he had not foreseen at the time.

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CHAPTER 10

LOST IN TRANSIT

Shortly before the end of the month, Jennings found himself involved in an alarming situation for which he was in no way to blame.

It began when Miss Thorpe telephoned the head-master to suggest a visit to an exhibition on the protection of the environment which she had recently attended in London.

"It would be just the thing to reward your boys for all their good work in helping to keep Linbury green," she twittered in fluting tones. "They would learn such a lot about pollution and conservation and things. It's a splendid exhibition: it's got computerised models of the 'greenhouse' effect and global warming, and they will learn a lot about the toxic results of car exhaust fumes in the atmosphere. And in addition to that..."

For some minutes she continued to describe the worrying problems illustrated by the exhibits, and the remedies that might possibly stay their effect.

Mr Pemberton-Oakes agreed heartily with all she was saying. His only complaint was that her high-pitched

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tones were pounding his left eardrum at an uncomfortable volume of decibels. He removed the receiver from his ear and held it at arm's length while she urged him to organise a school visit to the exhibition.

When, at last, she stopped talking he said, "I agree, Miss Thorpe, it's a splendid idea, but I shall have to limit the party to a reasonably small number - say a dozen or twenty. To take the whole school across London on public transport during the rush hour is quite out of the question."

"Oh, I see." She sounded slightly disappointed and went on, "Well, in that case, I would urge you to give priority to some of the younger boys. They were so helpful in starting the village tidying scheme. Two of them were especially valuable: they even volunteered to feed my fish while I was away. You simply must include them."

The headmaster winced. He was certainly not going to allow Miss Thorpe to tell him what to do in his own school! Politely, but firmly, he said, "You must leave it to me, Miss Thorpe, to select a suitable group."

The matter was discussed during staff supper that evening, when it was decided to limit the party to the boys of Form Three escorted by Mr Carter and Mr Wilkins.

At first, the headmaster was inclined to exclude Jennings. "After that business of breaking bounds, I

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think it would teach him a lesson to make him stay behind," he said.

Mr Carter disagreed. "But you've already punished him for that," he pointed out. "It seems a little hard to punish him twice for the same offence."

Jennings would have been surprised to learn that Mr Wilkins, also, was on his side.

"This visit has got nothing to do with what happened nearly a month ago," he said. "He's still paying the penalty for that. If we go on adding further penalties weeks afterwards, the boy won't know whether he's on his head or his heels. It's got to stop somewhere."

Mr Pemberton-Oakes frowned at his cheese and biscuits. "Very well, then. He may go, but I shall rely on you, Wilkins, to keep him under strict control."

"I'll do that all right," Mr Wilkins agreed. "You can take my word for it. I shall keep such a close eye on young Master Jennings that he won't be able to move an inch without my knowing all about it."

It sounded a reliable safeguard. But then, Mr Wilkins had no means of foreseeing the future.

On the following Saturday the seventeen boys of Form Three, accompanied by two masters, travelled by the school mini-bus to Dunhambury where they took the train to London. Mr Carter divided the party into two groups, he taking charge of nine boys with the remainder in the care of Mr Wilkins.

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The train journey was uneventful, apart from Mr Wilkins' altercation with a young man whose personal stereo radio was blaring pop music at a volume which could be heard from end to end of the coach. The argument was settled in Mr Wilkins' favour: the noise level was grudgingly reduced, and normal conversation became possible.

After that, the masters resigned themselves to being the willing victims of ridiculous riddles and pointless puns which the boys always inflicted on the staff on journeys of this sort. They were jokes and puzzles which the masters had first heard many years before, but they sportingly played up and pretended to be baffled by conundrums about chickens crossing roads, earwigs falling over cliffs and elephants stuck in refrigerators. It would have spoiled the fun if the adults had revealed that the witticisms were anything but new.

"Sir, did you hear about the absent-minded professor who put his wet umbrella into bed and stood himself in the sink to drain?"

Mr Wilkins smiled indulgently. "Very droll, Bromwich!" He must have been younger than Bromwich when he had first heard that one, he thought.

"Sir, Mr Carter, sir, why is a -1 mean, what is the difference between a - no, sorry, I've got it wrong. I'll start again. What does a monstrous man-eating giant wear when the weather is cold?"

"No idea. You tell me!"

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"His ogre-coat!" Rumbelow bounced on his seat in triumph at outwitting the master. He was unaware that Mr Carter, himself, had made up this terrible pun on a school journey in the distant past.

Victoria Station was crowded when the school party arrived. So far it had been an enjoyable, carefree journey, but the next stage of their route involved crossing London by Underground and this turned out to be something of a nightmare.

They managed to keep together going down on the escalator, but when they reached the platform the crowds were so dense that there was no room to move.

It was just after midday and, in addition to the normal throng of passengers, hundreds of football supporters were packing into the trains on their way to cup-tie matches.

"Keep close together," Mr Carter ordered. "Hang on to your neighbour and, whatever happens, don't get separated."

The first two trains to arrive were so full that they had no chance of boarding, but when the next train drew in Mr Carter squeezed his party into one coach while Mr Wilkins' group managed to edge their way into the next coach behind. Passengers were wedged all along the aisle of the coach and the boys stood squashed in a tight huddle just inside the sliding doors.

The boys were cheerful enough, not minding the

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discomfort and leaving all responsibility to the masters in charge. But Mr Wilkins felt uneasy: it was all very well for the headmaster to plan this journey by public transport, but he hadn't given much thought to the vast crowds who would be travelling across London at the same time. Mr Wilkins forced a rueful smile as he remembered his boast that Jennings wouldn't be able to move an inch without his knowing all about it. At the moment, Jennings was wedged in so tightly that he couldn't have moved an inch if he'd tried!

More passengers crowded aboard as the journey continued, sometimes impeding other travellers who wanted to get off. At some stations there were delays when the doors would not close because of the crush. But at last, after twenty minutes of horrendous travel, Mr Wilkins heaved a sigh of relief.

"We get out next stop," he called loudly to his tightly packed charges. "Everybody be ready to jump out quickly. No wasting time!"

Moments later, the train pulled up at the platform and the doors slid open. Mr Wilkins, as the last of his party to board, had been wedged against the doors during the journey and was the first one to step out.

"Quickly now, quickly!" he boomed, urging his party on to the platform. "Keep together and don't move once you're out."

The boys skipped out as nimbly as they could while Mr Wilkins did a rapid head-count to make sure that

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all were off the train. ". . . four, five, six, seven." And there was Jennings, the last one, about to jump off.

Then disaster struck! Jennings was in the doorway when two men waiting to board pushed their way in, colliding with Jennings and forcing him backwards into the crowd behind.

"Hey, hey! Let me out! I want to get off!" he yelled in panic, but by now more passengers were boarding and his way to the doors was blocked.

Out on the platform, Mr Wilkins leaped forward to stop the doors from closing ... He leaped too late. The doors slid shut, the train started.

Through the glass panel of the door, he glimpsed the horrified look on Jennings' face as the train bore him away into the darkness of the tunnel.

Mr Wilkins stood on the platform rigid with shock as the train disappeared from view. Then, recovering, he looked up to see Mr Carter and his group approaching.

"Carter! Carter! Jennings is still on the train," he cried in strangled tones. "Whatever shall we do?"

Mr Carter stayed calm at this moment of crisis. "Tell me what happened," he said.

"He didn't get off. I told them all to be ready and the silly little boy—"

"He couldn't get off," Darbishire squawked in dis-may. "It wasn't his fault. Those two men got in and he got pushed back."

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"That's right. He hadn't got a hope," Martin-Jones confirmed.

The situation was serious but not, at the moment, desperate.

"Provided he keeps his head and doesn't panic, he should be all right," Mr Carter said. "All he need do is to get out at the next station, cross to the opposite platform and catch the next train back. He'll guess we'll be waiting for him."

So the party moved across to the other platform to await the absentee's return. Here, too, the crowd was dense, and Jennings might easily be missed as there was no means of knowing whereabouts on the train he would have travelled. They kept a sharp look-out in all directions.

The first train arrived, but there was no sign of Jennings. Neither was he on the next train, nor the one after that.

Time passed. Trains came and went, but still no trace of Jennings.

"He's had time to catch half a dozen trains back, by now," Mr Wilkins fumed. "Where on earth has the silly little boy got to?"

"Perhaps he's gone past already," Venables sug-gested. "Perhaps he didn't know which station to get out at."

"And if he did get out somewhere else, he hasn't got a ticket to show at the barrier," Temple pointed

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out. "We're all booked on one party ticket, aren't we?"

Mr Carter, deep in thought, didn't answer. So many unforeseeable things could have happened: it was any-one's guess!

If Jennings had crossed to the wrong platform, or got confused in the rabbit-warren of passages linking the different lines of the Underground network, he might be almost anywhere by now. He could ask for directions, of course, provided he knew which station he was bound for. Probably he didn't, having left such details to the masters in charge. It was all very worrying!

"What are we going to do?" Mr Wilkins demanded, when yet another train had come and gone. "This is getting us nowhere. He's had time to get across London and back by now. It looks as though he isn't coming. I'd say he's thoroughly lost."

Mr Carter said, "There doesn't seem to be much point in all of us waiting here for him. We could be here all day and still not meet up." He considered for a moment and said, "You stay here, Wilkins. I'll take the boys with me to the exhibition: it's only just round the corner. If he doesn't show up in the next half-hour, come and join me and we'll ring the police."

When the boys had departed, Mr Wilkins stationed himself near the exit sign. The crowd was beginning

to thin out, but it still wasn't easy to keep observation on all the passengers alighting.

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So, for the next half-hour Mr Wilkins stood, dis-traught with worry, surveying the length of the platform. It seemed the longest thirty minutes he had ever spent.

But it was a hopeless vigil, and eventually he decided it was useless to wait any longer. The only thing to do now was to report the matter to the police and leave the case of the missing passenger in their hands.

It was a despondent and deeply unhappy Mr Wilkins who made his way up to street-level to join the main party at the exhibition.

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CHAPTER 11

UNDERGROUND

Jennings was seized with a feeling of helplessness as the platform lights died away and the train swept into the tunnel. His stomach felt empty, his knees weak; he was alone in a crowd of strangers with no one to turn to for help.

Then he took a grip on himself. There was no need to panic. He knew exactly what to do. He would get out at the next stop and catch a train back to where the school party would be waiting for him.

He spent the next few moments scowling at the two men who were responsible for his plight. If they hadn't come barging in like that, pushing him back, this would never have happened. There was a warning over the doors saying, Obstructing the doors causes delay and can be dangerous. Huh! Fat lot of good it was putting up notices with people like them around! He scowled at them harder.

One of the men was bald and scraggy, wearing a dark raincoat and carrying an unfurled umbrella. He was standing close up against the doors. The other man

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was much younger, short-haired with thin features, wearing jeans and carrying an airline travel bag.

Jennings was standing between them and, though they seemed to be strangers, he noticed a quick glance pass from one to the other before they turned away and appeared to be looking in different directions.

Standing next to the man in jeans was a tall, burly, middle-aged passenger carrying a briefcase. A label on the luggage identified the traveller as Dr Bernard O'Connor of London, SW.

What happened next happened so quickly that, even when it was over, Jennings could not be sure whether he had actually seen what he thought he saw.

It was a shadow rather than an object that flashed past his eyes as the man in jeans moved slightly and the tall, burly Bernard O'Connor gave a sudden start, clapped his hand to his hip pocket and shouted, "Hey, I've been robbed! My wallet's gone! My pocket's been picked."

He swung round in the confined space and grabbed the man in jeans by the arm. "It was you! You've got my wallet! I felt it go!"

"Let go of me! I haven't got anything," the young man protested. "I never touched you."

"You did! I felt it! You were standing right behind me."

"So were a dozen other people. If you've lost some-thing, it was nothing to do with me, mate." The young man's tone was easy and confident. "You can search

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me if you like. Feel my pockets! Here, look inside my bag if you don't believe me!" He opened the travel bag he was carrying, revealing only a pair of trainers and a cigarette packet. For good measure he took them out, held the empty bag upside down and shook it. "There you are! I told you it wasn't me! I expect you dropped it somewhere."

"I did no such thing! It was in my hip pocket just a moment ago." Dr Bernard O'Connor was baffled. He stood glaring at the passengers around him, helpless to identify which one had picked his pocket. "One of you must have got it!" he declared.

The other passengers were looking at one another suspiciously and feeling their own pockets to make sure that they, too, had not been robbed. None of them said anything, either for fear of being accused, or because they didn't want to get involved in the argument.

The only passenger to take no notice was the man with the umbrella who seemed unaware of what was going on. He might have been deaf, judging by his indifference to the scene.

Nobody was paying any attention to Jennings who, for the moment, forgot his own troubles in the com-motion taking place around him. He was intrigued by the puzzle of who the pickpocket might be and where the wallet was hidden. If the young man in jeans was the thief, where had he stowed his booty? For he certainly didn't seem to have it on him. But supposing

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he had an accomplice close at hand to whom he could pass his pocket-pickings unobserved! What then?

Jennings' mind flashed back to the fleeting shadow that he thought he had seen whisking past his eyes just after the train started. Or was it something more solid than a shadow? An object, perhaps? And he remembered the quick, meaningful glance that had passed between the two men. Could it have been a message? A signal? He couldn't be sure, of course, but if his hunch was right. . . !

He looked again at the bald, scraggy man standing against the doors. He noticed that his umbrella was not rolled, that the canopy was hanging loosely about its frame, gaping open at the top. He edged a little nearer, so close that he could feel the ribs of the umbrella pressing against his leg.

By now, the commotion amongst the passengers was at its height. Dr O'Connor was storming with frustrated anger. "Somebody's got it! One of you lot must have got it! I shall stop the train! I shall call the police!"

Jennings made up his mind, took a deep breath and plunged his arm down inside the fabric of the umbrella. His fingers touched a rectangular leather object. He grabbed it and jerked his hand out from the canopy before the umbrella-man could stop him.

"Here it is!" he shouted above the uproar and held the wallet aloft. "I've found it!"

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All eyes turned towards Jennings and the uproar ceased abruptly. At the same time, the train drew into a station and began slowing to a stop.

"That's it! That's my wallet right enough," cried Dr O'Connor as Jennings passed it across to him. "Where did you find it, lad?"

"It was in that man's umbrella, down at the bottom."At that moment the train stopped, the doors slid

open. As they did so the umbrella-man and his young partner-in-crime jumped out and hurried away along the platform. Dr O'Connor made to follow, but stopped in the doorway as the two men became swallowed up in the crowd.

"Hopeless! I'd never catch up with them," he said, and turned back to Jennings. "Thank you, lad. That was really smart of you. I've got just about everything in that wallet - cash, cheque book, credit cards—"

"Excuse me, but I want to get out," Jennings broke in urgently.

"Eh? Get out? But I haven't thanked you properly yet. You deserve something for spotting that wallet. You certainly do! Here, wait while I—"

"Yes, but I can't wait. Really I can't. I've got to go." Jennings was dancing with impatience, but now his way was blocked by the burly figure of Dr O'Connor standing in the open doorway, his briefcase clasped between his knees as he thumbed through his wallet

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in search of a suitable reward. "OK. Hang about, I won't hold you up. I just wanted to say how much I appreciate your—"

But now, incoming passengers were obstructing Jennings' efforts to struggle past. As he reached the doors, they slid shut in front of him. The platform lights receded and the train was on its way to the next station on the line.

Dr O'Connor was so overjoyed at getting his wallet back and so delighted with the part Jennings had played in its recovery that, to begin with, he seemed slow to understand what the boy was so worried about.

"Gone past your station, have you?" he said when Jennings tried to explain his predicament. "Nothing to worry about, lad. Just get off next stop and take a train back. Nothing simpler!"

"It's not as easy as that," Jennings told him, as the train bore him further and further away from his destination. "I'm not sure where to get off. I can't remember now whether it's two stops or three and I don't even know the name of the station." He gulped and swallowed hard. "And even if I get out at the right one, I may not be able to find them with all these people about. If they've all gone off to the exhibition, I might be arrested for travelling without a ticket."

"Why haven't you got a ticket?"

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"Mr Carter's got it - that's our master. It's a school party, you see, and we're all on one ticket."

"I shouldn't let that worry you. I'll break my journey at the next stop and we'll both get out," Dr O'Connor decided. For there was no sense in letting the boy be whisked further and further away from wherever he was supposed to be going, and decisions could not easily be discussed in a noisy and overcrowded Underground train. Dr O'Connor was more than willing to take full responsibility for the welfare of one who had rendered him so great a service.

So at the next station they both got out and sat on a bench on the platform to decide what was to be done.

Dr O'Connor said, "Well, if you don't know where you were supposed to get out, do you know where your party is going to?"

This was easy. "We're going to an exhibition about ecology and environment and things at some museum, but I don't know where it is."

"Environment! That simplifies things a lot. There's only one ecology exhibition on in London at the moment that I know of. It's at the Metropolitan Museum. I suggest we try there first."

As they went up the escalator to the street, Jennings said, "It was a bit of luck your knowing about that exhibition, wasn't it?"

"No, not really. It's my line of country, as you might say. In fact, I gave a talk there last week."

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"Are you an ecologist, then?""More or less. Actually, I'm a climatologist."Jennings looked puzzled. "You mean you climb up

things?""No, I study climate - a meteorologist, if you like.""Oh, a weather-man! Do you do forecasts on the

telly?""Nothing so glamorous, I'm afraid. I'm part of a

research team studying the effects of ecology on global weather patterns." Dr O'Connor sighed and shook his head. "We'll probably be at it for fifty years before we find some of the answers."

They reached the top of the escalator where Dr O'Connor paid for Jennings' inability to produce a ticket and they went out into the street to look for a taxi.

"Feeling more cheerful, now?" the doctor inquired."Well, yes, but I'm terribly hungry. We were going

to have lunch at the exhibition, but the others will have had theirs by the time I get there."

Dr O'Connor considered. He realised that the masters in charge of the party would, by now, be frantic with worry concerning the whereabouts of their absentee. Clearly, there was no time to go to a cafe for a meal, but a take-away sandwich bar nearby offered a solution, and within a few minutes Jennings and his escort were in a taxi on their way to the Metropolitan Museum.

As they headed through the busy streets, Dr O'Connor again raised the subject of rewarding his

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young benefactor, but Jennings, munching a cheese sandwich and clutching a bag of potato crisps, turned his offer down.

"It was just a fluke, really. I just happened to see what happened," he maintained. "And anyway you paid for my ticket and my sandwich, and now you're paying for me to roll up in a taxi. That's quite enough reward, honestly. . . Would you like one of my crisps ?"

"No, thank you." Dr O'Connor was already late for an appointment owing to the trouble on the Under-ground, but he was determined to restore Jennings to his school party in safety before doing anything else.

"I shan't be able to stay once I've handed you over," he said as the taxi stopped outside the Metropolitan Museum. "I'll give you my card with my address; if there are any questions about what happened, just tell your headmaster to get in touch with me."

"Thank you," said Jennings. He read the card and put it in his pocket. "Thanks a lot. This might come in handy."

"I'll just make sure we've come to the right place and—"

"Oh, this is the place, right enough." Jennings said, looking out of the taxi window. "I can see one of our masters coming along the street."

Emerging from the Underground, Mr Wilkins, raddled with anxiety, made his way towards the exhibition.

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He'd find Carter and then they'd phone the police. He hoped and prayed that no harm had befallen the boy.

Then, as he approached the front steps of the Metropolitan Museum, he looked up and saw the absentee alighting from a taxi, eating a bag of crisps.

There were times, back at school, when Mr Wilkins was not at all pleased to see Jennings and would go to great lengths to avoid him. Indeed, he had been known to take refuge in the staff-room and decline to answer the door in order to escaps the ceaseless questions and unending requests for information from the most infuriating boy in Form Three.

But this was not one of those times! Now, he had never in all his life been so glad to see J. C. T. Jennings in person, alive and well, and looking his usual, incorrigible self.

"Jennings!" he shouted joyfully with the full force of his lungs. "Jennings! Thank goodness you're safe, boy, thank goodness you're safe! Are you all right?"

Jennings turned to greet him, beaming a wide, triumphant smile.

"Oh, hullo, sir! Yes, I'm all right. Would you like a crisp?"

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CHAPTER 12

THE MAPLE TREE

Miss Thorpe had been right in her opinion about the ecology exhibition. It was well worth a visit, as the Form Three party found out when they made their way round the ground floor of the Metropolitan Museum.

There was a great deal to see and a great deal to do. There were models showing the spread of pollution over land, air and water the world over; there was a film about endangered animals and another about the probable effect of changing climate (Research byB. O'Connor, PhD, FRMetS). Diagrams, photographs, wall-charts and short lectures covered a whole range of subjects connected with the changing face of the world.

The school party were busily occupied all after-noon, and came away clutching leaflets and booklets handed out by the stall-holders inviting them to play a worthwhile part in securing their habitat for the foreseeable future.

The afternoon crowds had cleared as the group returned to Victoria Station by Underground and there

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were no hazards to be faced on the journey. Even so, Mr Wilkins took care to see that Jennings was never more than an arm's length away from him ... In more ways than one it had been an unforgettable day.

Mr Pemberton-Oakes was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet, and was determined that the lessons learned at the exhibition should be put to good use.

Accordingly, on Monday when he took a lesson with Form Three, he decided that they should carry their investigations a stage further.

"For your preparation this evening I want you to write a personal letter to the Education Officer or the secretary of one of the societies dealing with some aspect of the environment which you found particularly interesting," he told them. "Ask questions, find out more information. I'm sure they'll be more than willing to help."

Form Three looked doubtful. "What sort of ques-tions, sir?" Bromwich asked.

"Anything you like. For example, you might be interested, when you leave school, in seeking a career in some branch of environmental studies. You could ask what sort of qualifications you would need and what the work would consist of. You can be sure that all dedicated scientists are only too willing to share their knowledge and experience

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with young people keen enough to follow in their footsteps."

Form Three set about their task that evening with furrowed brows. It wasn't turning out to be so simple as the headmaster had suggested, for most of the leaflets which the boys had collected at the exhibition already provided answers to the questions they might have considered asking.

"They'll just think we're a bunch of half-wits," Venables observed, thumbing through his pile of leaf-lets. "They'll just write back and say, 'We've answered that one on page two. Don't they teach you to read at your school?'"

"Well, we've all got to write to somebody about something," Atkinson pointed out. He picked up an attractive coloured booklet and scanned the back page. "How about this one? It's got the name of the Education Officer on it. I vote we all write to him. At least we know his name, so it'll be a personal letter - just like the Head said."

There was a general murmur of agreement."Good scheme! He's obviously the guy to write to."

Nuttall nodded approvingly. "It'd be best if we all asked him different questions, when we've thought of some, so he'll have plenty to write back about."

Darbishire said, "I shall ask him about all those millions of drink cans. I still say it's impossible to pile them up so they reach the moon."

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Temple said, "I'll say I want to be an ecology expert when I grow up, and how much money do they earn?"

"I bet he's got an exciting job, saving elephants and whales and mopping up oil-slicks and poisonous chemicals and stuff," said Bromwich. "I'll ask him to jot down the story of his life. About eight pages would be enough, I should think, and if he can do it straight away, so much the better."

Rumbelow said, "I shall ask him about the 'green-house effect'."

"We've done that already," Martin-Jones reminded him. "The Head told us all about it."

"I know, but there's one bit I still don't understand. After all, if you chuck a brick through the roof of a greenhouse you let the heat out, so how can it go on getting hotter?"

"You've got it all wrong, Rumbo! It's the ozone layer that's got a hole in it, not the greenhouse."

"Oh, I see!" Rumbelow still looked doubtful. "Ah, but supposing they'd both got holes in them, what then?"

Venables grinned and said, "Try doing an experi-ment: bung a brick through the Head's greenhouse and see what happens."

Jennings took no part in the discussion. He knew to whom he was going to write, but he wasn't going

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to have everybody else muscling in on his private and personal contact.

He scratched his head and thought hard. What should he say? Dr O'Connor wasn't an Education Officer, of course, but as an expert weather-man he was just as important - probably more so, because he was studying problems that he'd said would take him fifty years to work out. Well, not him personally, perhaps, he'd be too old by then, but there'd be other people joining in as time went by. Fifty years was a long time for a man, but trees lived much longer - if they were spared. And trees were important for life on Earth . . . He'd ask Dr O'Connor about trees, ask what must be done to stop the destruction of the rain forests.

Jennings took Dr O'Connor's visiting card from his pocket and copied down the address.

On Friday, when the post arrived, there were two letters of topical interest amongst the headmaster's correspondence.

The first one read:

Dear Sir,

Yesterday morning I received sixteen letters by the same post from boys in your school. Not one of them had enclosed a stamped addressed envelope and all of them expected a reply by return of post.

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I was asked to write out the story of my life in not less than eight pages; I was asked for details about my income from all sources and invited to solve a problem about balancing metal drink tins on top of one another. And many more questions besides.

Anxious though I am to encourage the conservation of world resources, I must point out that I am exceedingly busy and cannot possibly write individual replies to sixteen letters by return of post.

I trust that you will explain this to my correspondents.

Yours sincerely,

The signature was a squiggle which the headmaster could not decipher.

Mr Pemberton-Oakes sighed. It was his own fault! He should have prepared the ground more thoroughly before letting Form Three loose on an exercise of this kind, he reflected.

The next letter said:

Dear Headmaster,

I was delighted to receive a letter from one of your boys whose address I did not know before, having omitted to ask him when we met last Saturday. I expect he has told you what happened on the

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Underground. I can only say how grateful I am to him, and to congratulate you on having amongst your pupils a boy with the initiative displayed by young Master Jennings in coming to my aid at a moment of crisis (for the contents of my wallet were virtually irreplaceable).

He refused to accept any financial reward, but as it is clear from his letter that he is keen about tree-conservation, I am taking the liberty of despatching, by carrier, a young maple tree (Acer carpinifolium) which I am hoping you will allow him to plant in the school garden. It will, I feel, be a suitable token of our meeting.

Yours sincerely, Bernard O'Connor

This time, Mr Pemberton-Oakes smiled. Jennings again! he thought.

The tree arrived the next morning and the tree-planting ceremony was planned for Sunday afternoon.

At first, it was decided that Jennings should plant his maple in the headmaster's garden, but the news of Dr O'Connor's gift spread rapidly and sparked off a wave of enthusiasm for tree-conservation throughout the school.

"Everybody ought to plant his own tree. Think of all the carbon dioxide it'd mop up if everybody did

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it," Temple argued at breakfast time. "I vote we all ask for trees for Christmas presents."

"Christmas trees?" Atkinson queried, doubtfully. "They wouldn't grow. All the ones we've had at home hadn't got any roots on."

"They don't have to be Christmas trees just because it's a Christmas present," Venables pointed out. "You could have willows or cherry trees - anything you like."

Darbishire had found some information about the value of trees in arid wastelands in one of the booklets he had picked up at the exhibition. Now, as he munched his breakfast cereal, he saw himself in khaki shorts and a pith helmet with a water-bottle and binoculars slung round his neck, leading an expedition across the Sahara, helping the tribesmen to protect their homelands from the encroaching sand. "We may be too late," he was saying to his head camel-driver, "but if we dig an irrigation canal and plant holly bushes all round the village, we may yet keep the desert at bay."

The vision faded as Rumbelow said, "Wake up, Darbi! I've asked you three times already to pass the marmalade."

At the Form One table, also, trees were the topic of conversation and Blotwell did his best to explain to Binns the complexities of photosynthesis.

"It's all about breathing, really," he said. "Stop eat-ing for half a second and take a deep breath."

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Binns did so."Now, when you breathe out again, it isn't fresh air

any more. It's a dangerous gas called carbon something."

Binns exhaled quickly. "Better get rid of it at once, then!"

"It's all right, it won't kill you in small doses because the tree breathes it in and turns it back into fresh air again."

"Which tree?""Any tree you like - they all do it."Binns considered for a moment. "I'd have to be

standing pretty close to the tree for that to work, wouldn't I?"

"It doesn't matter really, so long as it's got enough breathing-space," Blotwell explained. "The tree breathes it out through its leaves, you see. It hasn't got any nostrils."

Was Blotwell pulling his leg? Binns wondered. Old Blotters talked such a lot of piffle you never knew what to believe! Of course trees didn't have nostrils! Everybody knew that!

After breakfast, Binns went outside, breathed deeply, and emptied his lungs several times against the bark of a willow tree growing near the junior football pitch. He wasn't really expecting anything sensational to happen, which was just as well because nothing sensational didl In fact, he couldn't even be

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sure that the tree really had breathed back at him at all, though he thought it might have done. However, he reckoned he'd given the willow enough carbon something to keep it busy for a while.

With the prospect of so many tree-lovers keen to plant for posterity, the headmaster decided that his private garden was not, perhaps, the best place for a plantation on such a large scale. In years to come the view from his study would be limited to branches brushing against his window and blocking out the light.

So, during the morning, he made over a patch of ground beyond the football pitches for the cultivation of a copse. In doing so, he started a tradition whereby present and future pupils would all plant their individual trees during their schooldays at Linbury Court.

After lunch, Jennings got to work. The ceremony was attended by a fair sprinkling of well-wishers and would-be helpers, amongst whom Darbishire had pride of place. It would be his job to hold the tree upright against a stake while Jennings, having dug the hole, piled the earth back around the roots.

But there were setbacks. The ground was hard and after ten minutes of strenuous, but unskilful, digging it became clear that a hole deep enough and wide enough to accommodate a small maple (Acer carpinifolium) was beyond the unaided efforts of an eleven-year-old boy. Unless, of course, he was prepared to go on dig-ging all night.

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So Mr Carter and Mr Wilkins took turns with spade

and fork and the work continued. Mr Pemberton-Oakes, having woken up from his after-lunch snooze, came out to see what progress was being made, and shortly afterwards Miss Thorpe and Jason arrived, the news of the ceremony having found its way to Oaktree Cottage.

Matters were not helped by Miss Thorpe letting Jason off the lead. Keen to take part, the bounding boxer leaped into the hole, impeding Mr Wilkins' efforts to shovel out the earth. On being ejected, the dog stood on the rim of the crater scrabbling back the soil faster than Mr Wilkins could shovel it out.

"Jason! Heel, boy, heel!" Miss Thorpe ordered, but the puppy took no notice and had to be forcibly removed from the work in hand and put back on the lead.

"Naughty dog! Naughty dog!" Miss Thorpe re-proached her pet in gentle tones and turned to the headmaster. "I take him to dog-training classes every Thursday, but I'm afraid he's rather a slow learner. He shows some improvement, but he could do better with more effort."

Mr Pemberton-Oakes knew how she felt. He had often used the same comment when writing end-of-term reports. "And how is your ecology project getting on?" he asked.

"Splendidly! Splendidly!" she fluted like a thrush

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starting up the dawn chorus. "Linbury has gone whole-heartedly green and even the District Council has turned up trumps. They've agreed to give us a bottle-bank and a waste-paper collection service." Her smile grew broader and her eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. "And it's all thanks to your boys that we've got the old railway line in such good shape. We're aiming to make it a Nature Reserve with the right sort of habitat to encourage plants and animals."

"You've certainly been busy," the headmaster observed.

"Yes, but I can't afford to relax, there's always plenty to do." She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Between you and me, I'm hoping to persuade Mr Arrowsmith to switch over to organic farming, but he's not too keen at the moment, I'm afraid."

By now, the hole was dug. Mr Carter and Mr Wilkins, breathing heavily, were putting on their jackets. Darbishire was holding the maple upright, Venables was watering the roots and Jennings was shovelling in the soil.

When the job was done, Jennings frowned critically and said, "It isn't very big, is it? Not much taller than me."

"Come back and have a look at it in ten years' time," Mr Carter told him. "Both you and the tree will have grown up a lot by then."

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CHAPTER 13

PHOTO FINISH

It was on the last day of term when the boys were ready to go home that copies of the school photograph arrived at Linbury Court from Messrs Scuttlewell and Openshaw, Photographers (Weddings and Studio Por-traits a Speciality).

A copy pinned to the notice-board in the staff-room aroused Mr Carter's interest and for a minute or so he stood scanning the rows effaces looking back at him from the print. Some of them (heeding Mr Openshaw's advice) wore beaming smiles; others wore a self-conscious smirk, or the glazed expression of a hypnotised rabbit - a feature all too common in school photographs. But, on the whole, the result was good: there were no fuzzy outlines to show that anyone had moved during the critical moments when the camera was in action.

There was, however, one aspect of the photograph that struck Mr Carter as unusual. He looked again, then raised despairing eyes to the ceiling. "Oh, no\ Not Jennings again!" he cried. "Come and have a look at this, Wilkins!"

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His colleague was emptying a locker and packing up some books to take home for the Christmas holidays. He came across and ran his eye over the photograph.

"It's come out very well, hasn't it?" Mr Wilkins observed genially. "Binns and Blotwell have actually brushed their hair; Venables has remembered to tuck his shirt in. I see Darbishire is wearing his usual, stuffed-owl expression and Jennings is - oh, my goodness!"

His voice faltered and he stood staring at the photo-graph, his eye swivelling from left to right and back again like a spectator at a tennis match. "This is pre-posterous! Jennings is in twicel"

"Exactly, "Mr Carter confirmed. "Unless, of course, unknown to you and me, we have another boy in the school with precisely the same physical features."

"It's nothing to make a joke about," Mr Wilkins said angrily. "It's a serious matter. What on earth did the silly little boy think he was playing at?"

There was a knock at the staff-room door, which opened to admit Jennings, brimming over with the care-free high spirits that infect every boy on the last day of term.

"Hullo, Mr Carter, sir! Hullo, Mr Wilkins! I'm just off. My parents are waiting for me in the hall, so I just looked in to say goodbye and wish you a—" He broke off, puzzled by the lack of goodwill obvious in Mr Wilkins' icy look of disapproval. What was the

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matter with Sir? All masters were supposed to be in a good mood at joyful times like this.

Quietly, Mr Carter said, "Have you seen the school photograph, Jennings?"

"No, not yet, sir. There's one up in the Assembly Hall, but Darbishire told me he'd just seen my parents' car driving up, so I didn't have time to look at it."

"Come and have a look at it now."Jennings crossed the room and looked at it. He gave

a little gasp of recognition. "Wow! Fossilised fishhooks! Petrified paint-pots! I'm in it at both ends."

"You certainly are," Mr Carter agreed. "Why?""I didn't know I was, honestly, sir. I thought the

camera had gone past Parslow when I got there, so I rushed off to the other end so as not ta be left out."

The explanation was received in stony silence."I was late, you see, sir. I couldn't find my shoes,"

he stumbled on, hoping to make matters clear. "I knew I was supposed to be standing next to Darbishire, and I thought I'd just have time to—"

"All right, all right," Mr Carter interposed. "It's done now. It's a photo that we'll just have to get used to."

"Sorry, sir. Terribly sorry. It was an accident. I didn't think."

"You didn't think! Typical!" fumed Mr Wilkins, who was not prepared to let the matter drop. "Don't you realise what you've done, you silly little boy? You've completely ruined the school

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photograph. What's the Head going to say when he sees it?"

The same thought had already flashed through Jennings' mind. With any luck, he thought, he would be off the premises on his homeward journey before the matter was brought to the headmaster's attention. It was something that would have to be faced at some future date, but he wasn't going to let it spoil his holidays.

"By next term it will be framed and hanging up in the Assembly Hall," Mr Wilkins went on. "The headmaster will be taking visitors round the school. What are they going to think when they see the same boy in the picture twice over?"

Jennings furrowed his brow in thought. "They'll think I'm identical twins, sir."

*"Doh!" Mr Wilkins clapped his hand to his head and went for a short walk round the table to relieve his feelings. Having calmed down a little, he said, "You really are a silly little boy, Jennings."

"Yes, sir. I know, sir. Sorry, sir.""You'd better run along now if your parents are

waiting for you," said Mr Carter. "Have a good holiday!"

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Same to you. "In the doorway, he turned and favoured both masters with his irrepressible smile. "Goodbye, then .'Happy Christmas! See you next term!"

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As the door closed behind Jennings, Mr Wilkins heaved a deep sigh. "Identical twins!" he muttered. "Two Jenningses! Two identical twin Jenningses! The mind boggles at the thought."

Mr Carter laughed. "Don't worry, Wilkins. He'll grow up in time - like his maple tree."

But Mr Wilkins was looking again at the photo-graph muttering, "Identical twins! The mind boggles!" beneath his breath.

Then he turned to his colleague and said, "I tell you, Carter, one Jennings in the school is more than enough for my peace of mind. Whatever would it be like if there were two?"

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Anthony Buckeridge’s letter

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Anthony Buckeridge

20 juin 1912LondresRoyaume-UniDécès 28 juin 2004Langue d'écriture AnglaisGenres Littérature pour la jeunesseŒuvres principalesBennett Anthony Malcolm Buckeridge (1912 - 2004) est un écrivain anglais pour la jeunesse, connu pour sa série Bennett (Jennings, en vo) et Rex Milligan.Sommaire

Biographie

Buckeridge est né le 20 juin 1912 à Londres mais, à la suite de la mort de son père durant la Première Guerre mondiale, il emménage avec sa mère à Ross-on-Wye pour vivre avec ses grands-parents. Après la fin de la guerre, ils reviennent à Londres où le jeune Buckeridge va développer un goût pour le théâtre et l'écriture. Une bourse d'un fonds pour les orphelins des employés de banque permet à sa mère de l'envoyer au Seaford College boarding school dans le Sussex. Son expérience d'écolier d'alors sera largement réinvestie dans ses futurs récits.

Après la mort du grand-père de Buckeridge, la famille déménage à Welwyn Garden City où sa mère travaillait à la promotion de la nouvelle utopie banlieusarde auprès des Londoniens. En 1930 Buckeridge commence à travailler à la banque de son père, mais il s'en lasse vite. Il se lance alors dans le métier d'acteur, comprenant une apparition non créditée dans le film de 1931 d'Anthony Asquith, Tell England.

Après son premier mariage avec Sylvia Brown, il s'inscrit à University College London où il s'engage dans des groupes s'inscrivant dans les mouvances socialiste et pacifiste

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(devenant plus tard un membre actif du CND - Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) mais il n'obtient pas de diplômes, échouant en Latin. Avec une jeune famille à entretenir, Buckeridge se retrouve à enseigner dans le Suffolk et le Northamptonshire ce qui lui apporte une inspiration supplémentaire pour ses futurs ouvrages. Pendant la Seconde guerre mondiale, Buckeridge est appelé comme pompier, et écrit plusieurs pièces de théâtre avant de revenir au métier d'enseignant à Ramsgate.

Il avait alors coutume de raconter à ses élèves des histoires à propos d'un certain Jennings imaginaire (toutefois inspiré par le personnage de son camarade de classe Diarmid Jennings), un élève interne au collège de Linbury Court Preparatory School, dont le directeur était M. Pemberton-Oakes.

Après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Buckeridge écrit une série de pièces de théâtre radiophoniques pour l'émission de la BBC',Children's Hour faisant la chronique des exploits de Jennings et de son camarade plus sérieux, Darbishire (Mortimer dans la version française) ; le premier épisode, Jennings Learns the Ropes, est pour la première fois diffusé le 16 octobre 1948.

En 1950, le premier roman d'une série de plus de vingt, Jennings goes to School, (Bennett au collège) paraît. Ces récits font une utilisation très libre du jargon inventif d'écolier de Buckeridge. Ces livres, aussi connus que la série de Frank Richards, Billy Bunter à leur époque, seront traduits en un grand nombre de langues.

En 1962, Buckeridge rencontre sa seconde épouse, Eileen Selby, qu'il reconnaît comme le véritable amour de sa vie. Ils s'installent près de Lewes où Buckeridge continue d'écrire et tient également quelques rôles (non chantant) au Festival d'art lyrique de Glyndebourne.

Buckeridge contribue de manière importante à l'humour britannique d'après-guerre, un fait reconnu notamment par le comédienStephen Fry. Son sens de la réplique comique et de l'euphémisme délectable a été rapproché du style de P. G. Wodehouse,Ben Hecht et Ben Travers.

Buckeridge a écrit une autobiographie, While I Remember (ISBN 0-9521482-1-8). Il a été récompensé par l'Ordre de l'Empire Britannique en 2003.

Buckeridge est mort le 28 juin 2004 à 92 ans, atteint depuis plusieurs années de la maladie de Parkinson. Il laisse sa seconde femme Eileen et trois enfants, dont deux de son premier mariage.

Les adaptations de ses œuvres

Les histoires d'écoliers anglais de classe moyenne étaient particulièrement populaires en Norvège où plusieurs épisodes furent filmés. Toutefois, les livres et les films norvégiens

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étaient complètement réécrits dans un décor norvégien et avec des noms norvégiens, ce qui fait que Jennings est un nom complètement inconnu en Norvège. La plupart des Norvégiens connaissent bien en revanche Stompa, qui est le patronyme de Jennings dans les livres norvégiens - et souvent sont convaincus que les livres étaient écrits à l'origine en norvégien.

En France, Jennings est devenu Bennett, lors de son adaptation pour la Bibliothèque verte par Olivier Séchan, le directeur de la collection d'alors, mais le décor est demeuré anglais.

Les romans « Bennett »

Bennett au collège - (Jennings Goes to School - Jennings va à l'école), (1950)L'Agence Bennett & Cie - (Jennings Follows a Clue - Jennings suit une piste), (1951)Bennett et sa cabane - (Jennings' Little Hut - La petite hutte de Jennings), (1951)Bennett et Mortimer - (Jennings and Darbishire - Jennings et Darbishire), (1952)Bennett et la roue folle - (Jennings' Diary - Le journal de Jennings), (1953)Bennett et le général - (According to Jennings - Selon Jennings), (1954)Bennett entre en scène - (Our Friend Jennings - Notre ami Jennings), (1955)Un ban pour Bennett - (Thanks to Jennings - Grâce à Jennings), (1957)Bennett et ses grenouilles - (Take Jennings, for Instance - Prenez Jennings, par exemple) (1958)Bennett et son piano - (Jennings, as Usual - Jennings, comme d'habitude), (1959)Bennett dans le bain - (The Trouble With Jennings - Le problème avec Jennings), (1960)Bennett prend le train - (Just Like Jennings - exactement comme Jennings), (1961)Bennett et la cartomanicienne - (Leave it to Jennings - laissez faire Jennings), (1963)Bennett fait son numéro - (Jennings, Of Course! - Jennings, bien sûr !), (1964)Bennett fonde un club - (Especially Jennings! - Tout particulièrement Jennings !), (1965)Bennett et le pigeon voyageur (Jennings Abounding - Jennings en fait beaucoup), (1967) (Réimprimé plus tard sous le titre jennings Unlimited pour éviter la confusion avec la pièce de théâtre de Samuels French du même titre.Bennett champion - (Jennings in Particular - Jennings en détails),(1968)Faites confiance à Bennett ! - (Trust Jennings!), (1969)Bennett se met en boule - (The Jennings Report - le rapport Jennings), (1970)Bennett dans la caverne - (Typically Jennings! - Typiquement Jennings !), (1971)Bennett n'en rate pas une - (Speaking of Jennings! - En parlant de Jennings !), (1973)Bennett en vacances - (Jennings at Large - Jennings prend le large), (1977)

Jennings Again - Encore Jennings ! (1991) - inédit en français.That's Jennings - Ça c'est Jennings ! (1994) - inédit en français.

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Traduction ou Adaptation?

Les romans en français ne sont pas des traductions intégrales mais des adaptations par l’écrivain Olivier Séchan. Ainsi, quelques aspects de l' "éducation anglaise" tels que les châtiments corporels, la prière à la chapelle ou le détail des matches de cricket, n'apparaissent pas dans la traduction française.

Les premiers volumes ont été condensés pour tenir dans le format imposé par la Bibliothèque verte. Les fins sont donc souvent tronquées de manière à ce que l'histoire se termine sur une pointe comique1.

Les prénoms des personnages ont eux aussi été remplacés par d'autres, moins inhabituels pour les lecteurs français : Jennings et Darbishire sont devenus Bennett et Mortimer. Leurs expressions favorites et imagées ont été traduites en français par le parler jeune des années 1960-70, et les fulminations du Professeur Wilkinson, dignes du Capitaine Haddock, ont été remplacées par de proches équivalents.

La pratique de l'adaptation était courante avant les années 1990 ou 2000 ; elle est parfois plus poussée dans certains pays : ainsi, en Norvège, nos collégiens anglais devenaient norvégiens; la campagne anglaise, un paysage nordique. Au XXIe siècle, les traducteurs sacrifient parfois à l'excès inverse : la traduction est exagérément fidèle, au point de n'avoir aucune saveur pour le lecteur français.

Illustrations

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Jean Reschofsky a été l'illustrateur des titres parus dans la collection Idéal-Bibliothèque que l’on peut considérer comme le meilleur dessinateur, « l’officiel «  et le plus représentatif de la série. Les illustrations françaises, dans la Bibliothèque verte, en particulier celles de Daniel Billon (assez médiocres) , représentent souvent les héros en jeunes adolescents, alors que les dessins originaux de Douglas Mays prêtaient à Bennett, Mortimer et leurs camarades des traits plus enfantins2.

Les éditions modernes (Bibliothèque rose et Livre de Poche) ont été ré-illustrées dans un style différent par (entre autres) Peters Day, Michel Backès, François Place, Victor de La Fuente, Françoise Pichardet Marie Mallard, dessins qui n’ont aucun lien avec l’essence même de la série. Fort heureusement la saveur du texte et son originalité ont été préservées.

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