Danny the Champion of the World Read online

  'Get them off!' screamed Mr Hazell. 'Get them away!'

  'Don't you worry, Mr 'Azell, sir,' Sergeant Samways cried out. 'We'll fix 'em for you. Come on, boys! Heasy does it! Shoo 'em right over the road!'

  'Not on my car, you idiot!' Mr Hazell bellowed, jumping up and down. 'Send them the other way!'

  'We will, sir, we will!' answered Sergeant Samways.

  In less than a minute, the Rolls was literally festooned with pheasants, all scratching and scrabbling and making their disgusting runny messes over the shiny silver paint. What is more, I saw at least a dozen of them fly right inside the car through the open door by the driver's seat. Whether or not Sergeant Samways had cunningly steered them in there himself, I didn't know, but it happened so quickly that Mr Hazell never even noticed.

  'Get those birds off my car!' Mr Hazell bellowed. 'Can't you see they're ruining the paintwork, you madman!'

  'Paintwork?' Sergeant Samways said. 'What paintwork?' He had stopped chasing the pheasants now and he stood there looking at Mr Hazell and shaking his head sadly from side to side. 'We've done our very best to hencourage these birds over the road,' he said, 'but they're too hignorant to hunderstand.'

  'My car, man!' shouted Mr Hazell. 'Get them away from my car!'

  'Ah,' the sergeant said. 'Your car. Yes, I see what you mean, sir. Beastly dirty birds, pheasants are. But why don't you just 'op in quick and drive 'er away fast? They'll 'ave to get off then, won't they?'

  Mr Hazell, who seemed only too glad of an excuse to escape from this madhouse, made a dash for the open door of the Rolls and leaped into the driver's seat. The moment he was in, Sergeant Samways slammed the door, and suddenly there was the most infernal uproar inside the car as a dozen or more enormous pheasants started squawking and flapping all over the seats and round Mr HazelPs head. 'Drive on, Mr 'Azell, sir!' shouted Sergeant Samways through the window in his most commanding policeman's voice. ' 'Urry up, 'urry up, 'urry up! Get goin' quick! There's no time to lose! Hignore them pheasants, Mr 'Azell, and haccelerate that hengine!'

  Mr Hazell didn't have much choice. He had to make a run for it now. He started the engine and the great Rolls shot off down the road with clouds of pheasants rising up from it in all directions.

  Then an extraordinary thing happened. The pheasants that had flown up off the car stayed up in the air. They didn't come flapping drunkenly down as we had expected them to. They stayed up and they kept on flying. Over the top of the filling-station they flew, and over the caravan, and over the field at the back where our little outdoor lavatory stood, and over the next field, and over the crest of the hill until they disappeared from sight.

  'Great Scott!' Doc Spencer cried. 'Just look at that! They've recovered! The sleeping pills have worn off at last!'

  Now all the other pheasants around the place were beginning to come awake. They were standing up tall on their legs and ruffling their feathers and turning their heads quickly from side to side. One or two of them started running about, then all the others started running; and when Sergeant Samways flapped his arms at them, the whole lot took off into the air and flew over the filling-station and were gone.

  Suddenly, there was not a pheasant left. And it was very interesting to see that none of them had flown across the road, or even down the road in the direction of Hazell's Wood and the great shooting party. Every one of them had flown in exactly the opposite direction!

  21

  Doc Spencer's Surprise

  Out on the main road, a line of about twenty cars and lorries was parked bumper to bumper, and the people were standing about in groups, laughing and talking about the astonishing sight they had just witnessed.

  'Come along, now!' Sergeant Samways called, striding towards them. 'Get goin'! Get movin'! We can't 'ave this! You're blockin' the 'ighway!'

  Nobody ever disobeyed Sergeant Samways, and soon the people were drifting back to their cars and getting in. In a few minutes, they too were all gone. Only the four of us were left now-Doc Spencer, Sergeant Samways, my father and me.

  'Well, Willum,' Sergeant Samways said, coming back from the road to join us beside the pumps. 'Them pheasants was the most hastonishin' sight I ever seed in my hentire life!'

  'It was lovely,' Doc Spencer said. 'Just lovely. Didn't you enjoy it, Danny?'

  'Marvellous,' I said.

  'Pity we lost them,' my father said. 'It very near broke my heart when they all started flying out of the pram. I knew we'd lost them then.'

  'But 'ow in 'eaven's name did you ever catch 'em in the first place?' asked Sergeant Samways. "Ow did you do it, Willum? Come on, man. Let me in on the secret.'

  My father told him. He kept it short, but even then it made a fine story. And all the way through it, the sergeant kept saying, 'Well I never! Well, I'll be blowed! You could knock me down with a feather! Stone the crows!' and things like that. And when the story was finished, he pointed his long policeman's finger straight at my face and cried, 'Well, I'll be jiggered! I never would 'ave thought a little nipper like you could come up with such a fantastical brain-wave as that! Young man, I congratulate you!'

  'He'll go a long way, young Danny will, you see if he doesn't,' Doc Spencer said. 'He'll be a great inventor one day!'

  To be spoken about like that by the two men I admired most in the world, after my father, made me blush and stutter. And as I stood there wondering what on earth I was expected to say in reply, a woman's voice behind me cried out, 'Well, thank goodness that's over at last!'

  This, of course, was Mrs Grace Clipstone, who was now picking her way cautiously down the caravan steps with young Christopher in her arms. 'Never in my life', she was saying, 'have I seen such a shambles as that!'

  The little white hat was still perched on the top of her head, and the prim white gloves were still on her hands. 'What a gathering!' she said, advancing towards us. 'What a gathering we have here of rogues and varmints! Good morning, Enoch.'

  'Good morning to you, Mrs Clipstone,' Sergeant Samways said.

  'How's the baby?' my father asked her.

  'The baby is better, thank you, William,' she said. 'Though I doubt he'll ever be quite the same again.'

  'Of course he will,' Doc Spencer said. 'Babies are tough.'

  'I don't care how tough they are!' she answered. 'How would you like it if you were being taken for a nice quiet walk in your pram on a pretty autumn morning... and you were sitting on a lovely soft mattress... and suddenly the mattress comes alive and starts bouncing you up and down like a stormy sea... and the next thing you know, there's about a hundred sharp curvy beaks poking up from underneath the mattress and pecking you to pieces!'

  The doctor cocked his head over to one side, then to the other, and he smiled at Mrs Clipstone.

  'You think it's funny?' she cried. 'Well just you wait, Doctor Spencer, and one night I'll put a few snakes or crocodiles or something under your mattress and see how you like it!'

  Sergeant Samways was fetching his bicycle from beside the pumps. 'Well, ladies and gents,' he said. 'I must be off and see who else is gettin' into mischief round 'ere.'

  'I am truly sorry you were troubled, Enoch,' my father said. 'And thanks very much indeed for the help.'

  'I wouldn't 'ave missed this one for all the tea in China,' Sergeant Samways said. 'But it did sadden me most terrible, Willum, to see all those lovely birds go slippin' right through our fingers like that. Because to my mind, there don't hexist a more luscious dish than roasted pheasant anywhere on this earth.'

  'It's going to sadden the vicar a lot more than it saddens you!' said Mrs Clipstone. 'That's all he's been talking about ever since he got out of bed this morning, the lovely roast pheasant he's going to have for his dinner tonight!'

  'He'll get over it,' Doc Spencer said.

  'He will not get over it and it's a rotten shame!' Mrs Clipstone said. 'Because now all I've got to give him are some awful frozen fillets of cod, and he never did like cod anyway.'

  'But,' my father said, '