I, Houdini. Lynne Banks Reid

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СКАЧАТЬ about looking for me I dived into a very small hole I’d noticed earlier, in the floor by the fireplace. I swear a fair-sized mouse might have got stuck in it, but I made myself into the merest thread of my former self and in a moment I found myself huddled in the deep dust between the joists.

      These are long planks standing on edge which you’ll find between the floor of an upstairs room and the ceiling of a downstairs room. Between them are long spaces, roadways to someone my size, and as there were plenty of places where I could climb over the tops of the joists I had what then seemed like a huge playground.

      For a while I rejoiced. They would never catch me now! How could they? There was only the one way in, and not even a child could get his hand through that! Happily and, I fear, smugly, I made a nest in a very warm corner near where I had come in (I like a bit of light). I did wonder at the time just why it was so warm; I didn’t have the experience to realise that that thick, long, hot thing nearby was a hot-water pipe. It was much too hot to touch, but it gave off enough warmth to make me comfortable and sleepy. I curled up and dropped off, not feeling the least bit guilty about the row that was going on about me overhead.

      I woke up feeling distinctly uncomfortable. To begin with the heat had increased to a point where I had dreamt I was being roasted alive. I jumped up hastily and moved to a cooler spot. There was no light coming through the hole now, I noticed, so I decided that it would be perfectly safe to pop up and attend to my other discomfort – hunger.

      I hadn’t managed to eat much the day before, what with one thing and another; that’s the trouble with escaping upstairs, there’s very little food lying about, and I hadn’t yet thought of leaving stores hidden in various strategic places all over the house. I realised I’d probably have to go downstairs to forage. I’d already seen the stairs, while being carried up and down them; they were thickly carpeted and I felt sure I could manage them all right, though getting back up might be a bit of an effort.

      I returned to the spot, below the hole, where I had been sleeping. It was awful just standing there, right next to that pipe – if hamsters could sweat, I’d have been wringing wet. I looked upwards. I could just about see the hole. I stood up on my back legs idiotically convinced that if I stretched to my fullest height I would somehow miraculously find myself climbing out. But alas! The hole was a good twice or three times my height above me.

      When I realised this I didn’t lose my head, at least, not until I had explored every possibility. I climbed on to the top edge of the nearest joist and ran to and fro, but it didn’t pass near enough to the hole. The only thing that did, was that wretched hot pipe. I could see an easy way on to that, further along, and once on top of it nothing could be simpler than to run to the hole and climb out – it passed just nicely under it. But who could stand on a thing like that? Even standing near it I felt my fur was scorching.

      Now I did begin to panic. I’m ashamed to admit I felt really sick with fear. How would I ever get out? How would I live if I had to stay in here? My nose had already told me there wasn’t so much as a mouldy breadcrumb anywhere in the large space between the floors where I now grimly realised I was trapped. As for water! Not a drop of course. And wasn’t I beginning to be thirsty, what with the heat and my growing terror!

      A grown-up hamster who’s got himself into a mess will, if he’s got any sense, at once sit down, partly to conserve energy and partly to think. I behaved ridiculously. I ran round in circles, I made funny little noises that I hadn’t known I could make; I climbed up on the joist and fell off it again; I even tried to climb the pipe, and hurt my paws of course. Oh, that pipe! It was maddening to see the way it lay, just beneath the hole, offering the perfect escape route, and yet – impossible to use.

      At last I was fairly worn out. I couldn’t sleep, I was too distracted, but I did lie down, at some distance from the hole, and just stared at it in misery. I supposed I would just waste away there in the dusty dark, slowly starve to death and be found, perhaps, years later, a mouldering skeleton…If hamsters could weep, I would have wept, with frustration, fear and self-pity, though of course I’d brought it all on myself.

      Morning came. A ray of light fell through the hole. I heard Mark moving about above me. And suddenly I knew what to do.

      When I’d escaped before I had often been caught when accidentally or carelessly making a noise. Hamsters have no proper voice, as I’ve said, though they can utter faint squeaks and hisses; but their feet scrabbling on a hard surface draws attention to them. Now I had to draw Mark’s attention. But how? It wasn’t so easy in that hot hell-hole I’d landed myself in. The floor was thick with dust and I could walk there without a sound. The joists were the same. The pipe was metal and I could have made a terrific row on that, but…! So what was I to do? In a flash of genius it came to me.

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