Arabel and Mortimer by Joan Aiken

up.

    "That looks like trouble," he said. "Maybe the old geezer heard something. We better not fool around; go straight for the giraffes, get them packed in, and get away."
    At this moment Lord Donisthorpe was speaking on the phone to the local police. "Yes, Inspector; as I just told you, we have reason to believe that there are thieves on my estate, engaged in stealing animals—
who
told me so? I understand that a raven, of unusually acute hearing, informed a young person named Arabel Jones, who informed a youthful attendant at the zoo—who informed
me
—"
    At this moment also, Noah the boa, who had decided, after careful inspection of Arabel, that she looked as if she might be good to eat—probably not
quite
as good as a doughnut, but still much better than a rabbit—had thrown an extra loop of himself round both Arabel and the doughnut machine, to which he was hitched, and had begun to squeeze, at the same time opening his mouth wider and wider.

    But his squeezing had an unexpected effect. It started the doughnut machine working, just as if somebody had put in a coin.
    Arabel, doing her best to keep quite calm, said politely, "Excuse me, but if you wouldn't mind undoing the coil that is holding my hands,
here,
I would be able to press the lever and then I could get you a doughnut, if you'd like?"
    Noah was not very bright, but he did understand the word
doughnut,
and Arabel's wriggling of her hands indicated what she meant. He loosened one of his coils; Arabel pressed the lever twice; and the machine ever so quickly sugared a doughnut and tossed it out into a paper cup. Noah swallowed it in a flash and, as the machine was still working, Arabel pressed the lever again.
    Meanwhile the thieves had quietly moved their truck on to the giraffe house, parked, and gone inside.
    "
Blimey,
" said Fred, "what, in the name of all that's 'orrible, 'as been going on 'ere?"
    For when they shone their flashlights around, a scene of perfectly hopeless confusion was revealed: all that could be seen was legs of giraffes at the

bottom of the spiral stair, while their necks, like some dreadfully tangled piece of knitting, were all twined up inside the spiral.

    "Strewth!" said the short fat man. "How are we
ever
going to get them out of there?"
    Meanwhile Lord Donisthorpe and Chris, both riding bicycles, were dashing through the zoo, hunting for the malefactors. Chris was dreadfully worried about Arabel because he had found his hut empty; he kept calling, as he rode along, "Arabel? Mortimer? Where are you?"
    At this moment the thieves, feverishly trying to untangle the necks of the giraffes and drag them out of the spiral stair, heard the unmistakable gulping howl of a police-car siren coming fast.
    "Here, we better scram," said the fat man.
    "They got cops in helicopters?" said Fred. "The sound o' that siren seems to be coming from dead overhead."
    "It's the acoustics of this building, thickhead."
    "Never mind where the perishing sound's
coming
from," said the pale man. "We better hop it. At least we've got the ostriches and the zebras."
    They ran for their truck. But Chris, who reached it just before them, had taken the key out of the ignition. The thieves were obliged to abandon their van and escape on foot. And as they pounded toward the distant gate, something like an enormous tube traveling at thirty miles an hour caught up with them, flung a half hitch round each of them, and brought them to the ground.

    It was Noah, who, having for once in his life eaten as many doughnuts as he wanted, was now prepared to do his job of burglar catching.
    Chris went in search of Arabel and found her, rather pale and faint, sitting by the doughnut machine. Mortimer, looking very pleased with himself indeed, was perched on her shoulder, still giving his celebrated imitation of a police-car siren.
    When the real police turned up half an hour later, all they had to do was take the thieves off to jail. Then, greatly to Arabel's relief,