The Happy Adventurers by Lydia Miller Middleton (best thriller novels of all time TXT) 📖

not leave the diamond till daylight? He had been a silly ass to imagine all that rubbish about it, and a much sillier ass to leave his safe bedroom and come out to this wild and desolate spot all alone. If he had brought Jerry—

Ah, Jerry! There had been that affair of Jerry’s eldest brother and the guns. Ten wounds. Both legs shot off. “Stick it out, you chaps.” The very last words he spoke in this world, sweeter in Jerry’s ear, Dick knew, than the finest poetry ever written. He gathered himself together and went on. It would never do to begin a habit of not sticking it out. For, wherever he was, he was always Dick Gordon to himself—a person for whom he wished to have a considerable amount of respect.

He wished that the orange grove, so cool and lovely by day, did not look so dark and mysterious by night.

At last! Here was the old tree. Now for it. He stepped round, prepared to enter the empty hollow regardless of possible snakes or blacks, when he heard a sound that made the hair rise on his head and the back of his neck feel queer, for it was unmistakably a child crying inside the tree. The child of the murdered woman, he thought. So the blacks were near—perhaps inside the tree at this very moment. The idea flitted across his mind that there was an extraordinary difference between reading about a thing and experiencing it. As the child’s sobs continued he shrunk together— he would rather meet an enemy in the open and be shot at twenty times than face these savage and mysterious blacks—and then he suddenly decided that, if there were a child there, he must go and look for it and do his best, blacks or no blacks.

But at that very instant the crying stopped and turned to speaking:

“Please, God, let there be a miracle. Just this once, God. I’m sorry, God; I’ll be good if you’ll make a miracle. Only this once. I am very, very sorry.” The crying began again.

“Grizzel!” exclaimed Dick, his fears all vanishing like darkness before light. “How on earth did she get there? She’ll be frightened into fits if she sees me.” He moved back a little distance and stopped to think. The best plan would be to call her softly, he decided.

“Grizzel! Where are you, Grizzel? Are you there, kiddy? It’s Dick calling. Are you in your tree? I’m coming—look out!”

[Illustration: DICK STARTED VIOLENTLY]

He came up to the hollow opening and looked in. It was Grizzel sure enough, in her little dressing-gown, her face blotched with tears and her curls crushed and tumbled. Dick put an arm round her: “Don’t cry, kiddy; the diamond is all right.”

“Oh, Dick, I did hope there might be a miracle,” she sobbed, burying her head on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry. My poor little diamond, all those years and years shut up in the ground! It had just one look at the sun and then I threw it back. Oh, Dick, if God would only make a miracle this once and put my diamond back!”

Dick felt a choky sensation in his throat as the thin little arm tightened round his neck.

“It’s all right, Grizzel,” he whispered, “we’ll find the diamond— let my arm loose a moment.” He groped round, and in another minute the stone was in his hand. He turned it over, and a pale-green ray darted out, more unearthly than ever in the moonlight.

Grizzel gave a cry as he laid it on her palm. “My diamond! The miracle! I thought it would happen! I just thought God hadn’t forgotten the way! Oh, Dick, I am so glad! I am so glad! My own dear little diamond!”

Dick had not the heart to explain at the moment that there had been no miracle, and Grizzel was far too preoccupied with her own joy and relief to wonder what had brought Dick to her tree just then; and besides, he thought vaguely, one never knows.

“We must be going in,” he said; “it’s ever so late and we’ll be cotched. How on earth did you get out?”

“Down the back stairs. The others were asleep, but I could not sleep, thinking of my little diamond in the cold river—” at that moment a wild shriek rang out again, and Dick started violently.

“It’s only a curlew calling to his friend,” Grizzel said, creeping out of the hollow. “They scream exactly like people being killed, but it’s only their way; they mean to be kind.”

Dick drew a long breath. A wild bird and a crying child! Suppose he had gone back! Thank goodness he hadn’t, but it was a near shave.

The boy and girl walked happily along, hand in hand. They had reached the slip-rail and were climbing over, when a tall man appeared from the garden of Drink Between.

“Grizzel! What in the wide creation are you doing here at this hour of night, or rather morning? Do you know it is nearly one o’clock? And what are you doing, young man?”

“Oh, Mr. Fraser—it’s Mr. Fraser,” she explained, turning to Dick, and such a confused tale followed, in which crystals, goldmines, diamonds, wickedness, and miracles were all jumbled together, that Mr. Fraser decided that a glass of milk, a biscuit, and bed, had better pave the way to a fuller explanation next day.

Ah Kew let them in with a wise smile and several nods of his head, and soon both Dick and Grizzel were sleeping as soundly as the other four Time-travellers.

“It is a green diamond,” Mr. Fraser pronounced next morning, “but what its value is we cannot tell until it is cut and polished. Then it will belong to Grizzel, to have and to hold till death do them part. If you really have found a diamond-mine, youngsters, something will have to be done about shares. Who finds keeps, you know. We’ll have the place properly surveyed and see what happens. But don’t begin counting your chickens too soon—these Australian diamond-mines are tricksy things; you never know how they are going to pan out. Wait a bit before you plan what to do with your fortune.”

Mollie, Dick, and Jerry suddenly felt very sad as they remembered that they were out of this stroke of luck. Whatever happened, Fortune was not preparing to smile on them, at least not in a way that would be of any immediate practical use to them when they got back to London. And a fortune apiece would have come in so very handy just now—just forty years hence, that is. The boys made up their minds to investigate this matter of fortunes in the colonies directly they got home.

Hugh tossed up his hat and caught it again: “We’ll be jolly rich,” he cried. “The Mater will get her trip home, and the Pater needn’t worry about bills and subscription lists any more, and I’ll get that camera—oh, ‘hard times, hard times, come again no more!’”

 

*

 

Mollie sat up. The clock was still ticking minutes into hours, hours into days, days into weeks and months and years.

“Oh dear,” she said, “I do wonder—”

“Wonder what, my Molliekins?” asked Aunt Mary, preceding Hester with the tea-tray.

“I wonder,” Mollie repeated, and then began to laugh. “I don’t suppose you ever bit like red-hot nippers, did you, Aunt Mary?”