The Abominables

11 The Hunter’s Club

While the yetis were walking up the long drive to Farley Towers, a meeting was being held inside the house, in the Gold drawing room, which faced the rose gardens and the terrace at the back.

The Gold drawing room looked much as it had looked in Lady Agatha’s day. The beautiful Chinese vases were still there, and the embroidered screen and the harpsichord. The sacred relic was there too: the other bedsock, the one that the Earl had brought back from Nanvi Dar and slept with under his pillow until he died.

But there were other things now, hung on the walls or resting on the furniture: things which would never have been allowed in the house when Lady Agatha was a girl. Heads they were, mostly. The stuffed heads of friendly hippopotamuses and gentle giraffes and thoughtful buffaloes, looking down on the room with sad and glassy eyes. There were skins, too — the skins of slaughtered tigers and zebras and leopards lying on top of the lovely, flower-patterned carpet. Sawn-off tusks and antlers were piled above the mantlepiece and in a glass case the bodies of poor, dead fishes hung stiffly.

The meeting was a big one. There were about thirty people sitting round a huge satinwood table, all of them men. And not one of them was a Farlingham.

The lady in the shop had not been lying when she said that Farley Towers still belonged to the Farlinghams. It did. But like many old families, the Farlinghams had become poor. They couldn’t afford any longer to keep the acres of roof mended, or pay gardeners to tend the grounds, or servants to care for the ninety-seven rooms. So they had decided to let the house to a school or a club or a hospital who would be able to look after it. And their agent, who looked after things for them, had let it to a club. A club that wanted to move from its headquarters in London to a place in the country because it needed more room.

The Hunter’s Club, it was called…

The members of the Hunter’s Club came from all over the world. There were oil sheiks from Iran, film stars from Hollywood, German industrialists, Spanish noblemen — anyone who thought that killing defenceless animals turned you into a “real” man. It cost twenty thousand pounds just to join the club and the funds were used to buy aeroplanes and motorboats and snowmobiles so that members could go and kill even the rarest animals in the most distant places without anyone being able to stop them.

In this way the Hunters had gunned down polar bears on the icebergs of Alaska, practically exterminated the Javan rhinoceroses and massacred the gentle, dreamy orang-utans of Borneo. Sometimes they went off on pig-sticking parties in Spain, running wild boars through with spears as they quietly snuffled under the chestnut trees, or they would fly to some African lake and mow down hundreds of gorgeous flamingoes from the comfort of their jeeps.

“Now then, gentlemen,” said the club president, a man called Colonel Bagwackerly, who had a boiled-looking face, pop eyes and a sticky moustache which clung like a slice of ginger pudding to his face. “As you know, we are here to discuss a very important matter.”

“A very important matter!” yelled the Hunters, banging their glasses on the table. They were already rather drunk.

“As you know,” Bagwackerly went on, “next week our great club is going to be one hundred years old.”

“One hundred years old!” repeated the Hunters, hiccuping and slapping each other on the back.

“And we are here to decide what kind of hunt we should have for our anniversary celebrations.”

“A big hunt! The biggest hunt ever!” cried the drunken Hunters.

“Quite so,” said Bagwackerly. “The only question is, what shall we hunt. And where?”

“How about polishing off the rest of the blue whales?” said a black-bearded Scotsman who called himself the MacDermot-Duff of Huist and Carra, and went around in a blood-red kilt and a sporran hung with a dozen dangling badger’s claws.

But the others shook their heads. Not enough sport, they said, and it was true. So many of these rare and marvellous animals had already been destroyed by greedy whale hunters that you could travel a thousand miles across the ice-blue waters of the Antarctic and not sight one.

“Vat if ve go schtick-pigging?” said a German member, Herr Blutenstein from Hamburg. But the others shook their heads again. For a big centenary hunt they wanted something bigger than pig-sticking; something with guns in it, and explosions, and blood.

One member suggested a kangaroo shoot in Australia, but so many of the kangaroos had already been turned into steaks that that wasn’t any good. Someone else suggested the wild camels in the Andes, but a revolution was going on in South America and the Hunters liked shooting things, not getting shot.

And then a small man with gold-rimmed spectacles and a pinched, pale nose got to his feet.

“I know!” he squeaked. “I know! I’ve got a great idea!”

“What is it, Prink?” said Colonel Bagwackerly in a weary voice.

They had let Mr Prink belong to the club because he was a very rich saucepan manufacturer and they needed him to buy helicopters and things like that. But everyone despised him: he was weedy and twittery and had a huge wife called Myrtle Prink of whom he was dreadfully afraid.

Now he tried to jump on his chair, fell off and squeaked: “Yetis! That’s what we should hunt! Abominable Snowmen! Fly out to the Himalayas and have a great big yeti hunt!”

There were groans from the other Hunters and the MacDermot-Duff of Huish and Carra swore a dreadful oath. “Don’t be an imbecile, Prink,” he said. “There aren’t any such things.”

“Yes, there are, there are!” shouted Mr Prink. “Look!”

And he took out a bundle of newspapers and threw them down on the table.

They were the papers that had been printed after Lucy’s footsteps had been found on Nanvi Dar and the headlines said things like: ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN STALKS AGAIN or MYSTERIOUS DENIZENS OF THE MOUNTAIN HEIGHTS or IT’S YES TO THE YETIS.

“Pull yourself together, Prink,” snarled Bagwackerly. “A pack of newspaper lies.”

“It isn’t, I’m sure it isn’t,” squealed Mr Prink. “We could stalk them in the snow and flush them from their lairs and shoot them with exploding bullets. We could have a yeti skin for the billiard room and yeti tusks in the armoury and—”

“Ein yeti schkalp für die library!” shouted Herr Blutenstein from Hamburg.

“That’s enough!” thundered Colonel Bagwackerly. “If I hear another word about yetis, Prink, I’ll have you thrown out of the club.” He broke off. “Drat it, that’s the doorbell, and I had to send the servants away. Can’t have them prying into our affairs. Go and see who it is, Prink, you might as well do something useful for once.”

So Mr Prink got up and went out of the room. When he came back, he couldn’t speak. His mouth opened, his mouth shut, but that was all.

“Well, what is it?” said Bagwackerly impatiently. “Who was there?”

“It’s… it’s… what you said I mustn’t say another word about,” stammered Mr Prink. “With… bedsocks.”

Furiously, Bagwackerly pushed him aside and strode out into the hall. When he came back his bloated face looked as though it had been dipped in flour. “My God,” he said, groping to loosen his tie, “my God…”

And then, with a great effort, he pulled himself together. “Shut the door, quickly, quickly,” he said. “We’ve only got a couple of minutes. We must make a plan.”

The yetis were sitting in the Blue salon having afternoon tea. They were sitting very close together though the room was vast — so close that Ambrose and Lucy could curl their seventh toes together like they used to do when they were small.

Polite afternoon tea is not an easy meal for yetis. When they balanced the fragile teacups on their knees, the cups sank right into their fur and couldn’t easily be found again, and the biscuits were so thin that they had to say, “Sorry, biscuit,” about ten times before they got a mouthful.

But that wasn’t why they were sitting so close together. They were sitting like that because of the things on the walls. Lady Agatha had not told them about the things that would be on the walls of the Blue salon and the Gold drawing room and all the other rooms that the yetis had seen. Right above Ambrose, so that his trunk almost dipped into Ambrose’s teacup, was the head of a poor, dead elephant. Grandma was sitting next to a large stuffed marabou and Uncle Otto’s bald patch had two nasty scratches where a pair of moose antlers had caught him as he bent forward to pass the jam.

And though Lady Agatha’s relations had been very nice to them, somehow they had not been quite like the yetis expected. The one with the red face and the gingery moustache who said he was Uncle George had such strange pop eyes and when he spoke it made the yetis feel that they were soldiers on parade rather than members of the family. Uncle Mac, who came from Scotland, had sworn quite dreadfully when he had spilt some hot water on his bare and tufty knees, and though the yetis were used to Bad Language from when Perry changed a wheel, somehow this was different. As for Uncle Leslie, he was such a twitchy, squeaky little man that he made the yetis very nervous. There didn’t seem to be any women in the family either, which was a pity. A woman’s touch would perhaps have made them feel more welcome.

“’ump,” said Clarence sadly. He meant the lump of sugar which, for the third time, had dropped from the sugar tongs on to the carpet.

“I wish Con and Ellen would come,” whispered Ambrose — and it was rather an uncertain whisper. “They promised to say goodbye to us.”

“Another cup of tea?” asked Uncle George.

But the yetis said, thank you, they had had enough.

“Come, come, just one more cup, I insist. Prink — er, Uncle Leslie, another cup for our visitors. For our relations, I should say.”

So Uncle Leslie poured out another five cups of tea, keeping his back turned to the yetis, and then Uncle George leaned over and dropped a small, white pill into each of them.

“Let us drink to your happy stay with us,” he said.

The yetis were far too polite to refuse a toast. They hadn’t wanted any more tea but now, one by one, they tilted their cups into their mouths and drank.

“That… poor elephant’s… all… swelled up,” said Ambrose groggily.

“I feel funny,” whispered Lucy. “Not nice funny: nasty funny.”

For a moment longer, the poor, drugged yetis struggled against unconsciousness. Then there was a crash as Uncle Otto fell forward across the tea things. Grandma slid off the sofa and came to rest in a grey and crumpled heap on the Persian carpet. Poor, bewildered Clarence keeled over sideways, taking a case of stuffed pike with him as he fell. Then Lucy and Ambrose collapsed into each other’s arms — and it was over.

It is easy to trick innocent creatures who trust you. The yetis would not wake for a long time now. And when they did, the fate in store for them was too dreadful for anyone to imagine.

An hour later, Con and Ellen walked up the long avenue of lime trees towards the iron-studded door of Farley Towers.

The grounds were surprisingly deserted. No gardeners bent over the flower beds, no strollers enjoying the golden afternoon.

“Look, an aeroplane! A big one!”

Con tilted his head back at the plane which had appeared suddenly, rising steeply from the fields behind the house. The Farlinghams must have their own airstrip! The thought that they were going to visit people rich and grand enough to run their own aeroplanes made the children rather nervous. They had done their best, pulling the last of their clean clothes out of the battered holdall, but they still weren’t exactly smart.

“I’m glad we didn’t bring Hubert,” said Ellen.

Perry, who wanted to get to the pub for opening time, had lifted Hubert over a low fence into a field of cows. They were the very best cows, pedigree Jerseys with soft doe eyes, but Hubert had just turned his back on them and started grazing. After having a famous father like El Magnifico he didn’t seem to be interested in mothers any more.

They had reached the gravelled space in front of the house. For a moment they hesitated. The Farlinghams would probably ask them to stay the night, but after that it was goodbye to the yetis, and both the children had lumps in their throats when they thought of it.

“Come on,” said Con, “let’s get it over,” and he ran up the wide flight of steps, and rang the bell.

For a long time, nobody came. Then there were footsteps: slow, heavy ones, and the door was creakingly pulled back.

The first thing the children saw, almost at eye level, was a pair of bony knees with black tufts of hair on them. Then, travelling upwards, they came to a blood-red kilt, a sporran with dangling badger’s claws and — much, much higher — a black beard and glittering black eyes…

“Yes,” snapped the bearded Scotsman.

“I’m Con Bellamy. This is my sister, Ellen. We’ve come to see that the yetis are all right and to say goodbye to them. Lady Agatha asked us to—”

“Yetis,” snarled the man. “What are you talking about?”

“The yetis who came just now. Ambrose and the others.”

“Look, if you’re having a joke with me you’ve chosen the wrong person,” said the man. “Yetis, my foot. Now get along both of you. This is a respectable stately home and we don’t want any guttersnipes cluttering it up.”

“But they must be here,” said Con desperately. “Perhaps—” And then he jumped back as the great oak door was slammed in his face.

Feeling suddenly sick with fear, the children turned and went slowly down the steps.

“What can have happened?” said Ellen. “Can they have got lost?”

“Hardly, down a dead straight avenue. Maybe Ambrose found a friend?”

But what sort of a friend? Not only were there no people about in the grounds, there were no animals either. No dogs sniffed the moist earth, no cats climbed the rooftops. Even the rooks in the elm trees seemed to have fled.

“Perhaps they’ve gone to explore the lake or something?”

“We’d better have a look, anyway.”

So, fighting down their panic, they searched the woods around the lake, and the Greek temple, and the kitchen gardens behind their sheltering walls. They searched the banks of the stream and the orchard and the stables but there was no sign of the yetis anywhere.

They were searching the topiary, with its yew trees cut into all sorts of shapes, when they saw a second plane come up from behind the house and fly off towards the south.

“There’s something very wrong with this…” began Con. Then he broke off. “What is it, Ellen?”

His sister was standing stock still with her hands over her face. He went over to her. Lying at her feet was a cat — an ordinary, tortoiseshell cat.

It had been shot clean through the heart.

For a moment, neither of them could speak. Then: “I’m going to break in,” said Con. “I’m going to get into the house somehow. Come on, let’s try the back.”

At first it seemed to be hopeless. The hundred or so windows were tightly shut; the green-painted doors were bolted. And then Con saw one narrow window on the ground floor where the catch had not been pushed completely across the frame. Carefully, levering with his penknife, Con started to work the wood away from the sill. It came slowly, but it came. And then they had climbed through and dropped down safely inside Farley Towers.

They were in the butler’s pantry. There was silver waiting to be polished, striped aprons lying on the chair, a big sink… Silently pushing open the green baize door they crept along the stone corridor which connected the servants’ quarters with the main part of the house.

There were no footsteps to be heard, no sound of voices. Farley Towers seemed to be totally deserted.

And then, as they reached the hallway which led to the main back door, they stopped with a gasp.

Lying like a blue stain across the flagstones — was Ambrose’s bedsock.

“So the man was telling lies. The yetis have been here,” said Con.

But Ellen had noticed something else. “Look, there’s Grandma’s shawl, all crumpled up behind that chest. And Queen Victoria…”

“They’ve been stripped,” said Con, his teeth beginning to chatter. “Someone has—”

He was stopped by a cry. A weird, strangled, spluttering cry from somewhere below them. “Hublopp!” it sounded like. “Blumph. Haroo!”

“It’s coming from the cellar,” said Ellen.

They opened one door to a cupboard, another to a lumber room. Then they found it — a dusty, wooden door from which a flight of dank, stone steps led downwards. And there, between cobwebby barrels, the thing that had been making the noises writhed and wriggled.

Con wrenched the gag from its mouth. It was Mr Prink, whom the other Hunters had gagged and bound and thrown into the cellar.

“What’s happened?” said Con. “Who did this? Where are the yetis?”

Mr Prink became hysterical. “It was just because they talked that I didn’t want to join in the shoot. I’ve never shot anything that talked,” he gabbled. “If I’d been able to shoot anything that talked I’d have shot Mrs Prink. Mrs Prink is my wife and she makes me eat mashed potatoes with lumps in them—”

“Shut up about Mrs Prink. What’s happened to the yetis?”

“They’re on a plane, on the way to the ice floes. There’s going to be a great hunt down there in the Antarctic.”

Con steadied himself. It was no good giving in to panic now.

“Why there? Why ice floes?”

“So they can run better. They want some sport, you know. This is the famous Hunter’s Club. It’s no fun shooting animals that just stand still. And everyone in England’s so namby-pamby. You can’t shoot this, you can’t kill that.”

“When is this hunt going to start?”

“On Thursday. It’s for the centenary of the Hunter’s Club. They’re all going to fly out and chase them in snowmobiles. The only yetis in the world and all for the club. Yeti skins,” raved Mr Prink, “yeti antlers, yeti tusks!”

Con kicked him. “Shut up, you murdering brute. Where exactly are they being dropped?”

“I can’t tell you— Ow! Ow! You’re hurting me!”

“If you don’t tell me I won’t hurt you, I’ll kill you,” said Con, and he meant it.

“A place called Coldwater Straits, near Smithson Island. It’s really good hunting country because there’s nowhere for them to hide. And I wanted to go too. But I’ve never shot anything that talked. If I’d been able to shoot anything that talked I’d have shot my wife. Mrs Prink is not a nice woman. She makes me take castor oil even when I’m regular and—”

Con wanted to put his thumbs against Mr Prink’s jugular vein and press hard, but there was one more thing he wanted to know.

“How did they make the yetis go with them? What lies did they tell?”

Mr Prink giggled. “They didn’t. They put drugs in their tea. And I wanted to go with them, I did really, but I’ve never shot anything that talked. I’ve shot a very big rhinoceros from an armour-plated Land Rover, but it didn’t talk. If I’d been able to shoot anything that talked I’d have shot Mrs— Help! Help! Where are you going? You’ve got to untie me!”

“Not a chance,” said Con.

It was only when they got out into the fresh air that the real horror of what they’d heard hit the children and then they just clung together in shock, unable to speak.

“It’s Monday today, isn’t it?” said Con when he could manage words again.

Ellen nodded. On Thursday a plane load of crazy men would set off for Coldwater Straits to murder the yetis.

They had three days to stop them. To achieve the impossible. Just three short days.