Free Arabel and Mortimer by Joan Aiken Page A

as soon as it was dark, and Aunt Effie and Uncle Urk had gone to bed, Arabel put on her dressing gown and slippers and went very softly down the stairs and out through the front door, which she had to unlock. She did not make a single sound.
    Mortimer had quieted down just a little inside the
meat safe, but he was very far from asleep. He was making a miserable mumbling, groaning sound to himself, and kicking and scratching with his claws. Arabel softly undid the catch.

    "Hush, Mortimer!" she whispered. "We don't want to wake them."
    They could hear Uncle Urk's snores coming out through the bedroom window. The sound was like somebody grinding a bunch of rusty wires along a section of corrugated iron, ending with a tremendous rattle.
    Mortimer was so glad to see Arabel that he went quite silently. She lifted him out of the meat safe and held him tight, flattening his feathers, which were all endways and ruffled. Then she carried him back up the stairs to her bedroom.
    Mortimer did not usually like sleeping on a bed; he preferred a bread bin or a coal scuttle or the
bathroom cupboard; but he had been so horrified by the meat safe that he was happy to share Arabel's eiderdown, though he did peck a hole in it so that most of the feathers came out. Either because of all the feathers flying around or because of the excitements of the day, neither Arabel nor Mortimer slept very well.

    Mortimer was dreaming about giraffes. Arabel was dreaming about Noah the boa.
    After an hour or so, Mortimer suddenly shot bolt upright in bed.
    "What is it, Mortimer?" whispered Arabel. She knew that Mortimer's ears were very keen, like those of an owl; he could hear a potato crisp fall onto a carpeted floor half a mile away.
    Mortimer turned his head, intently listening. Now even Arabel thought she could hear something, past Uncle Urk's snores—a soft series of muffled thumps.
    "Oh my goodness, Mortimer! Do you think those men are stealing Lord Donisthorpe's giraffes?"
    Mortimer did think so. His boot-button black eyes gleamed with pleasure at the thought. Arabel could see this because the moon was shining brightly through the window.
    "I had better wake up Uncle Urk," said Arabel. "Though Aunt Effie will be cross, because she said she didn't want to hear me."
    She went and tapped on Uncle Urk's door and
said in a soft, polite voice, so as not to disturb Aunt Effie, "Uncle Urk. Would you come out, please? We believe that thieves are stealing your giraffes."

    But the noise made by Uncle Urk as he snored was so tremendous that neither he nor Effie (who was snoring a bit on her own account) could possibly hear Arabel's polite tones.
    "Oh dear, Mortimer," said Arabel then. "I wonder what we had better do."
    Mortimer plainly thought that they ought to let well enough alone. His expression suggested that if every giraffe in the zoo were hijacked, he, personally, would not raise any objection.
    "Perhaps we could wake up Lord Donisthorpe," Arabel said, and she went downstairs and into the garden, with Mortimer sitting on her shoulder.
    But when they were close to it, Lord Donisthorpe's castle looked very difficult to enter. There was a moat, and a drawbridge, which was raised, and a massive wooden door, which was shut.
    Then Arabel remembered that Chris slept in a wooden hut near the ostrich enclosure.
    "We'll wake Chris," she told Mortimer. "He'll know what to do."
    Mortimer was greatly enjoying the trip through the moonlit zoo. He did not mind where they went, or what they did, as long as they did not go back to bed too soon.
    Arabel walked quietly over the grass in her bedroom slippers. "Chris sleeps in the hut with red geraniums in the window boxes," she said. "He showed it to me while the doughnuts were cooking."

    "Kaaark," said Mortimer, thinking about doughnuts.
    Arabel walked up to the hut with the red geraniums and banged on the door.
    "Chris!" she called softly. "It's me—Arabel! Will you open the door, please?"
    It took a long time