The Box of Delights by John Masefield Page B

wolves or the aeroplane?’
    The telephone was full of crackles and buzzes. A female voice said, ‘Pottington-Two-Five, please.’ A distant man’s voice said, ‘Give up the strychnine and go on with the
belladonna’; then from far away an old man’s voice said, ‘No, none the worse, I thank you: all the better.’
    ‘You are really Mr Hollings?’ Kay asked, ‘that found my ticket and was scrobbled into the aeroplane?’
    ‘Really, truly he,’ the voice answered. ‘And you’re the young gentleman?’
    ‘Yes,’ Kay said.
    ‘Goodbye, my young Master,’ the voice said. Kay hung up the receiver.
    ‘So that’s that,’ the Inspector said. ‘That’s how Science helps the Law. You thought your friend was scrobbled. Now by Science and the Law you hear from his own
lips that all is well.’
    Somehow Kay wondered if all was well. The telephone was working badly and the voice was like the old man’s voice, but still, somehow he felt uneasy.
    ‘I’m very glad,’ Kay said, ‘that the man is safe. Please forgive us for taking up so much of your time.’
    ‘A public man’s time is the public’s,’ the Inspector said. ‘It’s my duty, as a public man, to listen to all and sundry at all times. Sometimes the Law has to
shut its eyes, sometimes there isn’t enough for the Law to go upon, sometimes the Law intervenes; but at all times, I say, let the Law in, Master Harker. Any tale that’s first-hand
evidence, you bring it to the Law, and, depend upon it, Master Kay, murder will out. However dark the deed, Master Kay, we bloodhounds of the Law, as they call us, will bring it into the
limelight.’
    Kay thanked him again, then they talked for a moment of brighter topics – rabbits, simple conjuring tricks, blue Persian cats, the Condicote Rugby Team, etc. – then they both shook
hands with the Inspector and wished him a very happy Christmas and New Year, and then they went home to breakfast, for which they were a little late.
    Just before they clambered over the garden fence of Seekings a puff of air came upon Kay’s face, which made him look up at the sky. It had been bright clearing weather at dawn; now it was
clouding over from the west on a muggy windless air. A weeping thaw had set in. As he entered the house there came the slip and splosh of snow dropping from the roofs. ‘There’s a
thaw,’ he said. ‘We shan’t get very far with that snowman we were going to build.’
    Before he went to breakfast, Kay tried to telephone Caroline Louisa, to ask how her brother was. Unfortunately, the line was out of order, owing to the snow. They said that the men were doing
their best, but couldn’t promise anything; they hoped to have the line ready during the day. The post had not come: that, however, was due to Christmas, not to the snow.
    All through breakfast, the snow fell from roofs and trees; slither, slither, splosh. When they went into the field to set about their snowman they found the snow rapidly becoming too sloshy:
they were soon working in slush.
    ‘We’d better stop,’ Jemima said. ‘We shall be wet through. He’ll never look up to much.’
    ‘We’ll give him a sort of a head,’ Kay said. They did this. Maria topped it with an old top hat that had lost its crown, Susan put in some dark stones for the eyes, and Peter
added a clay pipe. Then they flung some sploshy snowballs at him.
    Ellen called to them from the door: ‘If you please,’ she said, ‘you’re not to get wet through.’
    ‘Oh, by the way, Ellen,’ Kay shouted, ‘have you had any telephone message?’
    ‘No, the telephone isn’t working,’ Ellen said.
    ‘Are they doing their best?’ Peter called.
    ‘Oh, Miss Susan,’ Ellen said, ‘you are naughty to go and get yourself wet through like this; and you, Miss Jemima. Miss Maria, your things will be ruined.’
    ‘Jolly good job,’ Maria said.
    ‘No, Miss Maria,’ Ellen said ‘it isn’t a good job, and you know that it isn’t; and you ought not to say