“We simply must keep it all a secret,” said Mike. “I’m quite sure Dimmy would be scared. The only thing I’m wondering about is - how are we going to keep a watch on the tower of the Old House in the daytime, without Dimmy wondering what we are doing? It was easy enough at night - but in the daytime it won’t be so easy.”
“Well, we’ll have to be out of our rooms whilst Dimmy is cleaning them each day,” said Peggy. “But as soon as the cleaning is done we could take it in turns to go into the top bedroom and watch, without Dimmy knowing. We could have fairly long watches - say three hours. We needn’t keep our eyes on the tower all the time - we could read or something and keep looking up. I shall do my knitting.”
“And I shall do my jigsaw,” said Mike. “I can do that and keep looking up easily.”
“We’ll begin to-morrow morning,” said Jack. “I hope Dimmy doesn’t go up to our bedroom and find one of us there - she’ll think we’ve quarrelled or something!”
They took a look at the tower in the distance as they went to bed that night. But there was nothing to be seen. Nobody looked out. A dim light shone, that was all.
“There must be somebody there now,” said Jack. “Or they wouldn’t have a light. Goodness, I’m sure I shall never go to sleep to-night! My mind keeps thinking of secret caves!”
They did lie awake rather a long time, but at last they were all asleep and dreaming. They dreamt of caves and passages and towers and prisoners, and had just as exciting a time in their sleep as they had had in the daytime.
Mike looked at the distant tower as soon as he jumped out of bed next morning, but there was no one there. Jack took a glance as he was about to go downstairs - and he gave a cry.
“There’s someone at the window!”
Mike came rushing to see - but Jack pushed him back. “Don’t go too near our window. If we can see them they can see us - and it looks to me as if it’s only Mr. Diaz.”
The two boys kept back a little so that no one could see them. Yes - it was Mr. Diaz - and he was looking straight at their window.
“Keep quite still, Mike,” he said. “He’s just trying to find out how much we can see of his tower, I’m sure!”
Mr. Diaz drew back after a while. Dimmy rang the breakfast bell again downstairs, and Peggy came bounding up the winding staircase to find out what the boys were doing.
That day the children began their three-hourly watches - and it was just as Peggy was taking over from Jack about six o’clock that evening that they first saw the Prisoner!
Jack had been carving a wooden boat with his penknife, sitting patiently for three hours at one side of the window so that Mr. Diaz would not catch sight of him if he should happen to look out once more. Every minute or two Jack glanced over to the distant tower, but he had seen no one there.
Then Peggy came running up the stairs to take her turn at watching - and just as Jack was getting up from his chair, and Peggy was picking up her knitting, they both happened to glance at the far window.
And they both saw the same thing!
“It’s a little boy!” said Jack, in the greatest astonishment. “He doesn’t look more than seven or eight!”
“He doesn’t look English,” said Peggy. “Even from here he looks very dark-haired and dark-eyed.”
The little boy in the distant tower leaned on the window-sill. Jack took up the field-glasses that lay near at hand and looked through them. He could then see the little boy looking as near as if he were in the garden of Peep-Hole!
“He looks awfully pale and miserable.” said Jack. “Almost as if he were crying!”
“Let me see,” said Peggy. Jack gave her the glasses. She looked through them. “Yes,” she said. “He certainly does look sad. I’m not surprised, either, if he’s a prisoner!”
“Let’s wave to him!” said Jack suddenly. “He’ll be glad to see other children.” lack leaned right out of his window, and began waving violently.
At first the boy in the tower did not notice. Then Jack’s moving arm attracted his attention, and he stared. Jack almost fell out of the window, because he waved so hard. Peggy squeezed beside him and waved too. The boy smiled and waved back. First he put one hand out of the window and then both, and waved them like flags!
“Good! He’s seen us,” said Jack, pleased. “Now the next thing is - how are we going to find out who he is?”
Peggy had a good idea. “If we did some big letters in black ink, and held them up at the window one after the other, to spell out words, he would know we were friends!”
“Good idea!” said Jack. “It looks as if it’s going to be rainy to-night, so we could all come up here and do the letters then. Dimmy’s got a friend coming in to see her, I know, so she won’t mind us coming up here.”
“I wonder if she’s got some black ink,” said Peggy.
“We’ll ask her. I’ve got some sheets of drawing paper we can use.”
The little boy at the tower window suddenly disappeared and did not come back. “I expect somebody came into the tower room and he came away from the window in case they guessed that he was signalling to someone,” said Jack.
Mike and Nora came running in through the garden at that moment, for it was raining. They rushed up to the bedroom at the top of their tower to see why Jack hadn’t come down to the beach.
When they heard about the boy prisoner in the tower of the Old House, they wished that they had seen him too. They were thrilled when Jack told them that they were all going to make giant black letters so that they might spell out words to the prisoner.
Peggy ran to see if Dimmy had any black ink, but she hadn’t.
“I’ve only the ordinary blue ink,” said Dimmy, rummaging in her desk. “But look - here’s some black charcoal. Will that do instead?”
“Oh yes!” cried Peggy. “Thank you, Dimmy. You won’t mind if we all play in Mike’s bedroom this evening, will you? You are having a friend to keep you company, aren’t you?”
“Oh yes,” said Dimmy. “I’ll be glad to have you four monkeys out of my way! You do what you like up there, but have the windows open so that you get plenty of fresh air.”
“Oh, we’ll be very particular about the windows, Dimmy!” said Peggy, laughing, and she ran off with the box of black charcoal.
She took the big white drawing sheets from her box, and went up to Mike’s bedroom. She gave some to each of the children, and opened the box of black charcoal.
“We shall make our hands black!” she said. “Isn’t the charcoal nice and black, Mike? The letters we make will show up well, and the prisoner will easily be able to read them.”
“Make them about a foot and a half tall and as thick as you can,” said Jack, sketching out a big letter A. “I’ll do the first six letters, you do the next six, Mike, Peggy the next six, and Nora the next. Whoever has finished first can do the odd two letters left. Look at my big A! I guess the prisoner could easily see that from his window.”
It was indeed a fine big A, nearly as high as the stool on which Jack was sitting. It was thickly done too, and surely anybody would be able to read it from quite a distance.
It did not take the children very long to finish all the letters. Peggy had done hers first, so she did Y and Z too, though she was sure they would not want to use the Z.
They had kept their eye on the tower window, but the boy had not appeared again. Now, with the rainy sky, the dark was coming down. A faint light appeared in the distant tower window. For a moment the children saw the outline of a boy’s head and shoulders at the window, and then it was gone again.
“We can’t do any signalling till to-morrow,” said Jack. “What a pity! All the letters are ready!”
Again the next day the children kept a three-hourly watch, and about two o’clock in the afternoon Jack and Nora saw the boy prisoner. He came to the window and leaned out as far as he could.
“He’s looking down into the grounds to make sure that nobody can see him waving to us,” said Jack. “Sensible fellow!”
Jack waved from his window, and the boy saw him and waved back. “Now we’ll do a bit of letter-work!” said Jack excitedly. “Give me the letters I want, Nora, please, and I’ll send him a message. I hope he can read!”
“What message are you sending?” asked Nora.
“Well. I think I’ll just say ‘WE ARE FRIENDS,’ ” said Jack. “Hand me the letters one by one.”
So Nora handed Jack the big letters drawn in black on the white paper. First a big W, then a big E, and so on. The boy prisoner watched the letters eagerly.
He read the words as the letters made them and nodded his head and smiled and waved. Then he began making letters with his fingers - but Jack could not see them so far away. He snatched up the field-glasses and looked through them. The boy began his message again. He held up one finger first.
“That’s ‘I,’ ” said Jack. Then the boy slanted his two first fingers together and crossed them with a middle finger.
“That’s ‘A,’ ” said Jack. Then the boy turned his hands the other way and made the letter M with four fingers.
“ ‘M’! ” said Jack. “ ‘I AM’ he has spelt out so far, Nora.”
The boy went on making the letters very cleverly with his fingers - and he spelt out the message “I AM A PRISONER.”
By this time Mike and Peggy had come upstairs to get their bathing-suits, which they had forgotten - but when they saw what was going on they sat down excitedly on Mike’s bed, whilst Jack spelt out the prisoner’s message.
“Jack, ask him who he is!” cried Nora, dancing up and down in excitement. So Jack spelt out the question with his black letters. And, dear me, what a surprising answer he got!
Jack had been watching the boy’s answer through the field-glasses. The others sat near him, waiting eagerly to know who the boy was. They could see him making letters with his fingers, but they could not see what letters they were for, unlike Jack, they had no glasses to help them.
“Who is he, Jack? Who is the prisoner?” cried Nora impatiently.
“Well,” said Jack, turning to them, “he has just spelt out in his fingers that he is Prince Paul!”
The others stared at him in surprise.
“Prince Paul!” said Peggy. “A prince! What country is he prince of?”
“I don’t know,” said Jack. “I’ll ask him. Where are the letters?”
But by the time he had got the first one, Prince Paul had disappeared. He went quite suddenly, as if someone had pulled him back. Jack darted back from his own window, and pulled Peggy with him. They almost fell on the floor and Peggy was quite cross.
“Don’t, Jack,” she began - but then she saw Jack’s face, and she followed his eyes, and saw what he saw. Mr. Diaz and sleepy-eyed Luiz were both at the far tower window - and they were looking very hard indeed at the children’s window.
“Did he see us, Jack?” said Peggy, speaking in a whisper, as if she was afraid that Mr. Diaz might hear her.
“No,” said Jack. “We got away just in time. Maybe they went into the prisoner’s room and caught him signalling. Or maybe they just took him away from the window because they wanted to look out themselves. I’m sure they know this is our bedroom!”
“Jack, do you think we can possibly rescue that boy?” asked Nora eagerly. “And do you think he really is a prince?”
“We can’t rescue him by using the secret passage,” said Jack, “because even if we used it, it only takes us to the cellars, and Mr. Diaz keeps the tower-room locked. This is going to be difficult.”
“We shall have to be very careful not to be seen by Mr. Diaz at our window,” said Nora. “Perhaps he already thinks we know about the prisoner.”
“He can’t know that,” said Jack. “He didn’t see our messages.”
“I say! I’ve got an idea!” said Mike. “What about us making a rope-ladder and getting up to the tower-room on it at night?”
“But how could we get it up to the window?” said Nora.
“Well, if we can tell the prisoner about it he can help to pull it up,” said Jack. “You know how to get a rope-ladder up to a high window, don’t you? First of all you tie a stone or something heavy on to a long piece of string. Then you tie the piece of string on to a thin twine. Then you tie the twine to the rope-ladder. You throw the stone up to the window and the person there catches it, pulls up the string. Pulls up the twine - and the rope-ladder comes last of all! He fixes it safely to something and escapes!”
“That’s a grand idea!” said the others.
“Let’s try it,” said Peggy.
“We’ll have to get string and twine and rope,” said Nora.
“George will let us have some,” said Mike.
“Let’s go and ask him now!” said Jack, jumping up. So down the stairs they rushed and out into the field where they knew George was working that day.
“George, George! Can you let us have lots of string and twine and rope?” yelled Jack.
“I dare say,” said George. “What do you want it for?”
“It’s a secret,” said Mike. “We’ll tell you later on.”
“You can go to my old boat in the cove and open the locker there,” said George. “There’s a mighty lot of string and stuff all tangled up there. You can have the loan of it if you want it.”
“Oh, thank you, George!” cried the four children, and they tore off to the cove. They found George’s boat and opened the locker at one end of it. Sure enough there was a mighty lot of string and twine and rope there, that George used for mending and making fishing-nets.
“Goodness! It’ll take some time to untangle all this!” said Peggy.
“Well, there’s four of us to do it,” said Jack. “We might as well sit here in the boat and get on with it now.”
“What shall we make the rungs of the ladder with?” said Peggy.
“There’s some little wooden stakes, quite strong, in Dimmy’s garden shed,” said Jack. “I saw them there the other day. They would be the very thing!”
“Look! Look!” said Peggy suddenly, in a low voice. The others looked up, and saw, coming across the sand towards them, the yellow-haired woman who had been with Mr. Diaz in the car, and who lived at the Old House.
“That must be Mrs. Diaz,” said Nora. “Is she coming to talk to us, I wonder?”
“Leave me to do the talking,” said Jack. “She’s been sent to find out how much we know, I’m sure.”
Mrs. Diaz came slowly over to them, holding a big sunshade over her head. She nodded to the children.
“You are very busy,” she said. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, playing about in George’s boat,” said Jack.
“You are often on the beach?” asked the woman, putting down her sunshade. “You play all the time here?”
“Nearly all,” said Jack. “We can’t when the tide is in.”
“Have you seen these exciting caves?” asked Mrs. Diaz, pointing to the caves with her sunshade. “Have you ever been in any, I wonder?”
“We don’t like them because they are dark and damp,” said Jack.
“Have none of the other children any tongues?” asked Mrs. Diaz, in a slightly sharp voice.
“They’re rather shy,” said Jack. “I’m their captain, anyway, so I do the talking.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Diaz. She made a pattern in the sand with her sunshade point. “How long are you staying at Peep-Hole?” she asked.
“Oh, not long,” said Jack.
“Your bedrooms are in the tower, aren’t they?” asked Mrs. Diaz, looking straight at Jack. Jack looked straight back.
“Yes,” he said. “They are.”
“Can you see the Old House from your bedrooms?” asked the golden-haired woman.