The Mystery of the Cupboard Read Online Free PDF Page A

used to the darkness and quiet of the country.
    Not that it was dark tonight. There was a full moon. It bathed the surrounding hills, fields, and woods, andshone down through a little tear in the roofers’ tarpaulin over his head. It was a bit like his old room where he’d slept on a platform under a skylight. It had felt like sleeping out under the sky.
    Suddenly he sat up. He’d heard a cry. It sounded just like the cry of a cat in distress!
    Without thinking, he jumped up and rushed through Gillon’s room (which he had to pass through to get to the stairs), and fumbled his way down and out into the soft-scented, unfamiliar, mildly scary country night, full of rustlings and creature noises that you never heard in London.
    In bare feet and by the clear light of the moon, he kicked through the fallen thatch, crossed the sloping lawn, let himself out through a little picket gate, and started pushing through the overgrown grass in the paddock, calling softly, “Kitsa! Kitsa, come on, Kits!” and making shwsh-a-wisha noises that used to bring her running. His feet were stung with stinging nettles and pricked with thistles, but he kept going until he stepped in an old cowpat - that was too much!
    â€œBloody
country!”
he exploded, and turned back, but not before he’d had a long listen. He couldn’t hear her now. It must have been a bird or something. He scraped his foot on the damp grass to clean it. Then he picked his way back towards the front door.
    It occurred to him, just as he was about to go in, to have a look to see if the milk had been drunk yet. Insteadof walking in the front door and out again at the back, because of his mucky foot he decided to walk round the outside to the kitchen door, which he did, treading on layers of old thatch all the way. And while he was passing under the plaque on the gable end, he nearly twisted his ankle stepping on something lumpy and hard.
    It didn’t feel like a stone, so he fumbled about in the thatch to see what it was — maybe it was ‘the oul’ bottle’! It would be fun if he could be the one to find it, not the thatchers at all!
    The rotted reeds had all matted together and must have fallen off the roof in a clump, instead of in thousands of loose bits like most of it. It felt disgusting to his groping fingers, and the smell of mustiness and rot — which pervaded the whole house — was very strong. Yet in the middle of it was undoubtedly something solid.
    He fished it out. It wasn’t a bottle, old or otherwise. It was an oblong package wrapped in blackened, disintegrating cloth and tied with thick string that came apart at his first tentative tug.
    He dropped the string on the path and moved back to the front of the house, into full moonlight. The bit of cloth was thick and heavy, like canvas. Omri carefully unwrapped it. His heart was beating very hard for some reason. He was suddenly terribly excited. What could this possibly be, that someone had hidden in the thatch perhaps as much as thirty years ago?
    Inside the wrapping was a small black metal cashboxwith a curved brass handle. It had a slot in the top to put coins in, but this was sealed with some lumpy hard stuff. It was very firmly locked. Separate from it was another, flat package that had lain under the box inside the cloth.
    When Omri unfolded this second piece of canvas, he found a thick notebook inside. It had a leather cover with metal corners, and it was full of writing.
    Unluckily, Gillon woke up as Omri was creeping through his room to get back to his own, and got a fright.
    â€œWho’s there! Who’s there!” he yelled right out loud. Next minute their father had come crashing through Omri’s room from the parents’ room beyond that.
    He switched on the light and Omri stood revealed. He thrust his find up his pyjama jacket and in the sudden blaze of light on everyone’s sleepy eyes, nobody saw him do it.
    â€œOmri!