Free Eight Days of Luke by Diana Wynne Jones

on a pitch twenty-two yards—” Mr. Chew turned his head and looked at David. David jumped. Mr. Chew was not Chinese. He had huge wiry eyebrows and high cheekbones at the top of great brown slabs of cheek. His mouth was like a cut in the slab and his chin jutted. His nose was a fierce beak. His eyes were very small, very dark, very piercing, and somehow quite savage. David would not have been surprised if Mr. Chew had got to his feet and torn him limb from limb. He was sure Mr. Chew could have done it very easily too. “The wicket, you know,” he said, trying to keep to the subject.
    â€œYou,” said Mr. Chew, fixing his savage eyes on David’s. “What’s your name?”
    â€œDavid, sir,” said David. The “sir” came quite unintentionally.
    Mr. Chew thought for a while and inspected David while he thought. “I’ll need to speak to you,” he said at length.
    â€œYes,” said David. “I was wanting to talk to you too. About cricket,” he went on bravely. “I’d like to tell you how I took five wickets against Radley House last—”
    Mr. Chew cut short this babbling ruthlessly. “Wait,” he said.
    â€œAll right.” David stood and watched Mr. Chew snatch and tear at a weed, and then at another. There is not much you can do if the other person refuses to talk or to listen. Thinking that at least the weeding was keeping Mr. Chew away from Luke, David slid his arm down along his leg and took a glance at his watch. As far as he could see, he was lucky if he had been standing beside Mr. Chew for two minutes. Even Luke could not deal with Aunt Dot in two minutes.
    Mr. Chew moved on to another weed, and David noticed an alarming thing. Every time Mr. Chew snatched and tore at a weed, it took him down the flowerbed, nearer to the house. Luke had said Mr. Chew was stupid, but David began to think that this was because Luke did not go by the usual rules. He suspected that Mr. Chew’s stupidity might be what most people would call deep cunning. He did his best to halt Mr. Chew’s progress.
    â€œEr—Mr. Chew,” he said.
    â€œWait,” said Mr. Chew.
    David waited, because he could not see what else to do. Together, they moved remorselessly toward the house. And surprisingly quickly. By the time they reached it and David took another look at his watch, only four more minutes had gone by. David saw that the only thing to hope for was that Aunt Dot had thrown Luke out of the house on the spot.
    When they were by the wall of the house, Mr. Chew stood up. David backed away a step without being able to help it. Mr. Chew was not tall, but he loomed. He would have made six of David. He stood looking up and down the wall of the house in a way David did not like at all, and at length he pointed.
    â€œThat window,” he said. “Whose is that?”
    David looked up along Mr. Chew’s great pointing arm. It was like looking along an oak tree. He could see perfectly well which window Mr. Chew meant, but he now had an opportunity to waste time and he took it.
    â€œWhich window do you mean? The one at the top is an attic. The next one along is—”
    â€œThird window up,” said Mr. Chew.
    â€œOh, that one,” said David. “You mean that one. That one—” Mr. Chew turned and looked at him, savagely. “Mine,” said David.
    â€œUnderneath it,” said Mr. Chew, pointing a little lower. “What’s that?”
    â€œYou mean the creeper?” David said.
    â€œYes,” said Mr. Chew. “And there’s something wrong with it, isn’t there?”
    â€œI see what you mean,” said David. “Yes.” The creeper was probably dead. Its leaves were brown and curled and singed-looking. Any gardener would have noticed it. But David was fairly sure Mr. Chew was not remarking on it because he was a gardener—though what else he was David could not have