Chapter Eleven
 

Every evening for the next few days the children took turns watching Uncle Raimon's house, waiting for the moment when both he and Aunt Elvira would be out of the house.   It was a boring, and often cold and miserable, task and they had to make up some pretty poor excuses to explain their absences.   Marta lived in terror that her Mother, or Grandmother, would catch her out and demand an explanation.  None of them liked lying to their family, especially Montserrat who tended to become all tongue tied when she told a fib.

Their Uncle and Aunt steadfastly refused to leave the house together until nearly a week later on a Friday evening.   Pere, who was on watch at the time, almost fell out of the tree he was sitting in when he saw their Range Rover pull out of the garage with Raimon at the wheel and Elvira at his side.  As soon as the car drove off he dashed along to the square and telephoned Xavier.

"The birds have flown!  The birds have flown!" he gasped into the mouthpiece, giving their agreed coded signal.

 "I beg your pardon?" came his Grandmother's voice.

 "Oh, sorry, wrong number,"  Pere muttered, in as deep a voice as he could manage, before quickly ringing off.   "Damn they were my last coins," he groaned.  "What do I do now?"

 "Who was that Gran?"  Xavier asked, trying to pretend he was not really interested.

 "Oh it was a wrong number," she said, sitting back down and picking up her knitting.

 The two children relaxed and Xavier picked up their game console again.

 "Your turn," Xavier told Marta, handing it over.

 Gran's mumbling interrupted them with a start:

 "He must have wanted the pet shop or the Animal Welfare Association, he said something about losing his birds."

 "The birds have flown!"  Marta said, startled.

 "Yes, that was it, how on earth did you know?"

 Behind his Grandmother's back Xavier signalled his sister to stay calm.

 "I've no idea.  It just came into my head," she said with her sweetest smile.
 
 

 "Wow, Grandma was really suspicious, wasn't she?"  Xavier noted, ten minutes later, as he and Marta dashed into the square where Pere should have been waiting with Montserrat.

 "Where the hell are they?"  Marta asked.

 Almost at once Pere came dashing round the corner from the direction of Uncle Raimon's followed, a short way behind, by Montserrat.

 "There was... There was... There was..." Pere panted, out of breath.

 "Take your time," Xavier told him, but Montserrat beat him to it and told them the news:

 "When you phoned I came straight down here.  Of course coming from our's you have to pass Uncle Raimon's.  As I did, I saw a light come on in the one of the upstairs windows.  I ran down and told Pere and we've just dashed back there to see if we could see who it was."

 "And?" Xavier demanded.

 "It's Elvira's mother!  She must be over for the weekend!"  Pere announced, finally having found his breath.  "She came to the living room window to close the blinds and we saw her clearly."

 "Then it's off then," Marta said, letting her chin drop.

 Xavier looked bitterly disappointed, but then suddenly began to laugh saying between guffaws:

 "But it's perfect, just perfect!"

 "He's finally flipped," said his sister not seeing the funny side of the situation.  "I don't see what the joke is.  Now we've got to start this farce all over again."

 "But don't you see, " Xavier began explaining, "The one thing we hadn't figured out in all this was how we were going to get in without setting off the burglar alarm.  Well it won't be on if there's someone in, will it?"

 "I'm not going in there with her in the house!"  Montserrat objected.  "Everyone in town says she's a witch!"

 Xavier stopped laughing and managed to say:

 "Don't be silly Montse, she's just a batty old deaf lady, that's all."

 Marta suddenly caught her brother's meaning and giggled:

 "Of course, that's it!  She's deaf as a post, she won't hear a thing.  It's perfect."

 "Well I'm still not going in," Montserrat insisted.

 "That's alright, you can stay outside and warn us if anyone comes."

 It is one thing talking about breaking into a house, and quite another actually carrying it out.  The four children stood in the bushes across from the back door sweating with anxiety, their hearts pounding like the bass in a disco record.

 "Well, come on then, aren't we going to do it?"  Pere said with scorn, hoping inside that Xavier would call the whole thing off.

"Got cold feet have we, eh Xavier?"

 Xavier growled and ran across the garden to the house, taking care to keep in shadow when he reached it.  He hissed for them to follow and one by one they crossed the pool of light cast by the streetlight and plunged into the darkness beside the house.

 Montserrat was detailed to keep an eye on the old lady by peering through the gaps in the living room blinds.

 "Keep back in the shadows though, whatever you do," Xavier instructed her.  Then he gave her a length of string to play out.
 "Pull it hard, three times, if you see any danger,"  he told her.

When Montserrat had disappeared, to take up her post at the front of the house, Xavier pulled on his ski gloves and took a rubber plunger out of the holdall he was carrying.  He licked it around the rim then applied it, firmly, to the kitchen window.  Checking it was secure, he took a glass cutter out of the bag and used it to draw a circle on the pane.  A gentle tap with his fist on the end of the plunger was enough to finish the job.  He then cautiously placed the device on the inside window ledge and, taking care not to touch the edge of the hole, leaned in and slipped the catch on the window.

 "Wow, the things you learn watching cop shows," Pere gasped in admiration.

 "So, who's coming in with me?" asked Xavier in a whisper.

 Pere peered at Marta and she squinted back at him.

 "I will," she announced to Pere's relief.

 "Got your gloves on and everything buttoned up?" Xavier asked.

 "Yes," Marta confirmed.  Her brother had stressed the importance of not leaving behind any clues that would lead Raimon straight to them.

 "O.K.  Balaclavas on and in we go," he said, slipping his own over his face.  He climbed in first and then helped his sister in.  Turning back to Pere, for a moment, he said, authoritatively:

 "Keep watch here and if there's any problem, just shout `Bandits, Bandits, Bandits!' got that?"

 Pere watched them disappear into the dark interior and held on tighter to his end of the string connecting him to his sister.

 In the living room the television was blaring away.   Elvira's mother, who could still not hear a thing, cursed her new hearing aid:
 "Cheap foreign rubbish," she complained aloud.  She was watching her favourite soap, reading the subtitles on teletext.  The latest twist of the plot had made her so nervous that she was compulsively stroking the jet black cat on her lap faster and faster.  The animal woke from a deep sleep and instantly pricked up its ears.  In less than a second it was fully alert.  Stretching itself, it snarled in the direction of the door and dug its claws into the old woman's thighs.

 Xavier and Marta knew the house well and lost no time making their way up to their relative's bedroom.  By torchlight they made straight for the wardrobe.  Marta checked each shelf in turn while her brother held the torch.  The lower shelves drew a blank and she had to get a chair to reach the top shelf.  She lifted the musty smelling sweaters one by one until she suddenly gasped in triumph:

 "Got it!"

 Climbing back down she moved the folder she was holding in her hands into the light.

 "Let's see what's inside," she said.
 

 Montserrat watched anxiously as the old lady got up out of her armchair and placed the cat on the floor.  The animal instantly shot over towards the door and stood there rigid as a Pointer showing its master where to find the kill.  Then to Montserrat's horror the old woman crossed to the sideboard and picked up an old fashioned broom which was leaning against it.  Armed with this, Elvira's mother cautiously opened the living room door.

"It's her broomstick, she really is a witch!" Montserrat said under her breath, snatching sharply at the string three times.
 
 

 Pere, his heart still beating furiously, waited for his cousins to come back.

 "Oh what are they up to?" he whispered to himself.

 What Pere did not know was that his sister was frantically trying to give him the warning sign at that very moment; and what Montserrat did not know was that the string had become entangled in Aunt Elvira's prize roses.
 

 Just as Marta was about to examine the contents of the folder, her brother saw the light on the stairs come on and span round dousing the torch.

 "Someone's coming!" he hissed, frozen to the spot.  "What are we going to do?"

 With no time to think, his sister acted on instinct and said:

 "Quick, under the bed!"

 They dived beneath the enormous four poster and lay trembling against each other, ready for the worst.  Suddenly Xavier let out a scream as something brushed against his leg.  Marta clasped one hand over her brother's mouth and with the other reached down and touched something warm and furry that began to purr at her touch.

 "Mephistopholes?  Mephistopholes?  Now where has that cat got to now,"  Elvira's mother said, standing on the landing and gasping from the effort of climbing upstairs.  The cat had streaked ahead of her and she had lost sight of it.  Glancing round, the old lady noticed that two doors were open in the passageway, one leading to her daughter's room and the other leading to her own.  She popped her head into the first and switched on the light.  Like her favourite detective she made an instant deduction:

 "The wardrobe door is open, and what's that chair doing there?"

 Then she suddenly had a terrible thought and cried aloud:

 "My jewels!  They might be after my jewels!" and without another thought she hobbled off to check on her treasure as fast as her old frame would take her.

 "It's now, or never!" Marta told Xavier, digging him in the ribs.

 The pair of them emerged from under the bed and crossed to the door.  Marta popped her head out into the passage:

 "Coast is clear, come on!" she cried, gripping the folder tightly to her chest and leaping down the stairs two at a time.  Xavier followed her with the cat at his heels.  Mephistopholes seemed to think this new game was great fun.

 Montserrat nearly jumped out of her skin as the front door of the house burst open and two figures in balaclavas dived out followed closely by a jet black cat.  Marta's familiar voice soon re-assured her:

 "Come on, round the back!"

 The three of them raced round the corner, the cat still at their heels, and found Pere holding on to his piece of string.

 "Everything go alright then," he asked them, calmly reaching down to stroke the animal behind the ears.  "Oh, and er... anyone got any chewing gum?"