David Blaize and the Blue Door

‘It’s all extremely nice,’ said David in a loud firm voice, ‘and I congratulate you on your fit and soldierly appearance. You are all dismissed. Good-night.’

The Brigadier-General gave a little sob.

‘They will all remember your Grace’s beautiful words till their dying day,’ he said, as the men fell out. ‘I dare say they won’t have long to wait for that,’ he added.

‘Oh, do you expect a battle soon?’ asked David.

‘Your Grace shall see the maps that show the movement of the enemy for yourself,’ said the Brigadier-General.

All the time they were threading their way through the tents on the lawn, and tripping over ropes and stepping into saucepans, and hitting their toes against shells, for the light from the door in the ground had gone out, and it was impossible to see what there was, or where you were going. The Brigadier-General’s spurs got constantly caught in tent-ropes: when this happened he cut the rope with his sword, and the tent fell down flat. David thought this was rather a high-handed and hasty proceeding, but he daren’t say much for fear of betraying some desperate ignorance, for it might be the privilege of Brigadier-Generals to cut any ropes they pleased.

Presently they came to a large square tent brilliantly lit inside, so that David could read the notice-board outside it, which said:

‘Head and tail quarters of his Grace,’ so he knew that this was his, and entered.

The tent smelled strongly of sausages, and no wonder, for one of the two tables was covered with them. The other was covered with maps. The rest of the furniture consisted of a small camp-bed, and a dressing-table, on which swords and tooth-brushes and medals and soap and bootlaces and cocked hats were lying about in the utmost confusion. A fire was burning brightly against the wall of the tent, which looked rather dangerous to David. It had already burned a hole right through the canvas behind it.

‘I think that fire had better be put out,’ he said to the Brigadier-General; ‘it can’t be very safe.’

The Brigadier-General blew at it as you would blow at a candle, and it went out instantly.

‘And now we’ll study the movements of the enemy,’ said David, going to the map table.

He took up the first map that lay there, and found it all very clear, for it represented on a large scale the house and garden and lake and the village. There was a direction at the top stating, ‘Route of the Enemy marked in red,’ and David began to follow it.

It started from his house, which was odd, since he had never seen any trace of any enemy there, and went down the nursery passage till it came to a square marked ‘Game cupboard, alias Miss Muffet’s.’ Then there was a gap and a note printed, ‘Enemy movements hard to trace here. Possibly he flew.’ And the red line began again in the village street close to the Bank. It went into the Bank and out again, crossed the road into the shoemaker’s, and then went down the village street to the bridge. From there it returned to the Bank again..

A terrible idea entered David’s head. This was precisely the route he had taken himself after going through the blue door. He felt himself turn pale, and bent over the map again to make certain.

From the Bank the enemy had gone to the house next door, which was labelled ‘Happy Families’ Institute, alias Miss Milligan’s School for young ladies, alias Station. Here enemy entrained.’ From there his route passed through a field or two, and came to the hairdresser’s, which was labelled ‘Hairdresser’s Junction.’ After that it came to an end with the note. ‘Enemy seen flying here at 8.34 A.M.’

David had no longer the slightest doubt that he was the enemy, and was now completely cut off in the middle of the camp of his foes. But then it puzzled him to know why they had made him their own Field-Marshal. Perhaps they didn’t know he was the enemy, or perhaps they had made him their Field-Marshal in order to lure him into this tent in the very middle of the camp. That seemed far the most likely explanation, and accounted for the guard of honour being so weird a collection of people. They were mocking him, or perhaps just putting him to the test, and seeing whether he knew anything whatever about soldiers. It must have been quite clear to them that he did not, and he could have kicked himself to think that he had gone wrestling with Miss Muffet’s spider in the garden-bed when he ought to have been inspecting. He had thought it wonderfully grand to fly all day, and be a Field-Marshal as soon as it got dark, but now it seemed that there were penalties attached to greatness. Never had he or any other Field-Marshal been in so precarious a position.

He clearly had to escape, and to escape he had to be alone. He folded up the map.

‘I have studied that thoroughly,’ he said, ‘and I want to be called at half-past seven in the morning. I will arrange the battle as soon as I have breakfasted.’

The Brigadier-General meantime had been eating sausages as hard as he could. He rapidly swallowed all that was in his mouth.

‘Very good, your Grace,’ he said. ‘I will have the barbed wire put up round your Grace’s headquarters.’

David reflected rapidly. It was far more likely that the barbed wire was intended to keep him in, rather than keep other people out. Of course he could get away by flying – at least he could have this morning, but he didn’t feel quite so certain about it now. Still it would never do to let the Brigadier-General think he suspected anything, though he wished he had let the Brigadier-General drown.

‘Make all the usual arrangements,’ he said.

As soon as he had gone David sat down to think. He felt his heart beating very quickly, but the whole thing was so exciting that it could not be called really beastly.

‘The plan is,’ said he to himself, ‘to make them believe I’ve gone to bed and don’t know that they know that I’m the enemy. I must go to bed without going to bed.’

That was not so hard to manage. He took off his Field-Marshal’s tunic with all its medals, and found, to his great relief, that he had his sailor clothes on below. So he stuffed a pillow into the tunic and buttoned it all the way down, and put it in his bed. Then he turned a sponge bag inside out so that it had the grey side outermost, put the sponge back in it, and laid it at the neck of the tunic with the Field-Marshal’s cocked hat on the top. He could not spare his trousers for legs, so he rolled up two maps and placed them in the bed below the tunic, and covered the figure up to the waist with the bed-clothes.

Anyhow, there was the Field-Marshal in bed in his clothes, ready to spring up at the call of duty.

‘That’ll convince them if they look in that I’ve gone to bed,’ said he, ‘only it won’t convince them so much if they see me as well. It’s quite certain I must hide until I go away.’

He crept under the map-table, which had a cloth on it nearly coming to the ground, and thought of another thing to make them believe he was unsuspicious and asleep.

‘I’ll snore,’ thought David, remembering how the crow had snored. ‘Haw, caw, haw. Rumph, humph, haw! Haw haw-w-w-w-w. Rumph!’

He had hardly stopped when he heard whispering outside the tent.

‘Yes, I peeped in,’ said one voice, ‘and there he was a-lying in his bed, an’ you don’t need to peep in to know he’s lying there still, sleeping the last sleep he’ll ever sleep on earth.’

‘And the barbed wire’s in place?’ asked another voice.

‘Yes. He couldn’t get through if he was fifty Field-Marshals, and he isn’t one.’

‘Who is he then?’ asked the first voice.

‘Why, he’s that little whipper-snapper as takes us out of our box and puts us back again, without a “with your leave,” or “by your leave,” nor anything. We’ll put him in a box to-morrow, tight screwed down, too.’

‘Just like his impudence to think himself a Field-Marshal,’ said the second. ‘Are we going to hang him first and shoot him next and behead him last, or t’ other way about.’

‘Makes no odds,’ said the second. ‘Eight o’clock to-morrow morning then, mate. Turn off the light in his tent, will you?’

David, under his table, shook with rage.

‘The beastly fellows,’ he whispered. ‘And I’ve treated them very kindly, too. See if I don’t melt them all down over the nursery fire!’

That was all very well, but it was still possible that he would be hung, shot, beheaded and buried first, and that was the business he had to attend to now. He was not anywhere near being able to get to the nursery fire, and in the meantime he was in a tent in the middle of the hostile camp, with any amount of barbed wire round him, and nothing to cut it with except a baton and some sausages.

‘Oh, it’s a horrid position,’ thought David very seriously, ‘but I must say it’s exciting.’

When the whispers had died away he went very cautiously to the door-flap and peeped out. The moon had risen, and by its light he could see lumps and chunks of barbed wire piled up high right across the entrance, like a thicket of blackberry bushes without any leaves on. There was no possibility of getting out that way, and he walked round his tent, pressing quietly with his finger against the canvas, and always getting pricked by the barbed wire which evidently had been heaped up all round him. Then he came to the fire-place, where the fire had burned a hole in the canvas, before the Brigadier-General blew it out; and, looking cautiously out, he saw that there was a gap here between the hedges of barbed wire, for it had never occurred to anybody that he should get out right through the middle of the fire.

‘That’s the only chance,’ thought David, his eyes sparkling with excitement.

He made a quantity of awful snore-noises again after that, and then very cautiously put his leg through the hole that the fire had burned in the canvas. Nobody interfered with it, and so he put the other leg through too, and presently stood outside his tent in a narrow alley between other tents. David had often sent himself to sleep by imagining himself escaping from positions of horrible danger, but now that it was necessary to escape without imagining anything, he felt extremely wide-awake. Probably there would be sentries guarding the camp, past whom he must somehow slip, but here in the camp itself there was no sign of life. Once or twice he ran a few steps in the hope that he might remember how to fly, but he had no longer any idea now, in the middle of the night, how to tread air, or paddle with his hands, and he made up his mind that he must escape on his two feet. The ground was encumbered with tent-ropes, and the guard of honour appeared to have dropped all their accoutrements about, for golf-clubs and toasting forks and other irregular weapons lay around among trench mortars and machine-guns and the more usual apparatus of battle. Then he came across the grey parrot, who looked at him with suspicion, and immediately began walking away with its toes crossed, sneezing continuously. David went on more quickly and cautiously after that: it was more than possible that this horrid bird was spying on him. He never had considered parrots to be real birds, else they would not for ever be trying to make themselves sound like cats and dogs and Mabel the kitchenmaid.

He had come close to the gravel path by the lake where he had held his foolish inspection of the guard of honour, and where the camp ended, without seeing anybody, when suddenly he came upon a large letter, propped up against a rope and addressed to him. He knew quite well that this might be some trap, and that it might explode in his face when he opened it; but, on the other hand, it might be some valuable communication from the birds. So he bent down to pick it up, but hardly had he touched it when thousands and thousands of electric bells and gongs and watchmen’s rattles went off all over the camp, and out of every tent there came the noise of people getting up and washing their faces, and brushing their teeth.

There was not a moment to lose, and without any attempt at concealing himself any more, he rushed across the gravel path, dodged a sentry, and ran down the bank to the edge of the lake. Since his Brigadier-General had fallen into the water (indeed, probably, in consequence of that), the fishes had put up their glass roof, and all over the lake below he saw the glimmer of their fires of red leaves.

‘Oh, let me in,’ he shouted, feeling like the pin-partridge on the ark. ‘My awful soldiers are going to hang and behead me.’

Already the sentries were close upon him, when a trap-door opened in the roof, and David jumped down into it. He heard it clang to behind him, and knew he was safe.

CHAPTER VII