“He’s just asked us in,” said Larry politely. “We have wiped our feet very carefully.”
“Just asked you in,” said Miss Miggle, the housekeeper, filled with astonishment. “But he never asks any one in – except Mr. Hick. And since they quarreled even he hasn’t been here.”
“But perhaps Mr. Smellie has visited Mr. Hick!” said Larry, still wiping his feet, anxious to go on with the conversation.
“No, indeed he hasn’t,” said Miss Miggle. “He told me that he wasn’t going to visit any one who shouted at him in the disgusting way that Mr. Hick did. Poor old gentleman, he doesn’t deserve to be shouted at. He’s very absent-minded and a bit queer sometimes, but there’s no harm in him.”
“Didn’t he go down and see the fire when Mr. Hick’s workroom got burnt?” asked Daisy. Miss Miggle shook her head.
“He went out for his usual walk that evening,” she
said. “About six o’clock. But he came back before the the fire was discovered.”
The children looked at one another. So Mr. Smellie had gone out that evening – could he possibly have slipped down to Mr. Hick’s, started the fire and come back again?
“Did you see the fire?” asked the housekeeper, with interest. But the children had no time to answer, for Mr. Smellie came out to see what they were doing. They went with him into his study – a most untidy room, strewn with all kinds of papers, its walls lined with books that reached right up to the ceiling.
“Gracious!” said Daisy, looking round. “Doesn’t any one ever tidy this room? You can hardly walk without stepping on papers!”
“Miss Higgle is forbidden to tidy this room,” said Mr. Smellie, putting his glasses on firmly. They had a habit of slipping down his nose, which was rather small. “Now let me show you these old, old books – written on rolls of paper – in the year, let me see now, in the year … er, er … I must look it up again. I knew it quite well, but that fellow Hick always contradicts me, and he muddles my mind so that I can’t remember.”
“I expect your quarrel a day or two ago really upset you,” said Daisy, most sympathetically. Mr. Smellie took off his glasses, polished them and put them back on his nose again.
“Yes,” he said, “yes. I don’t like quarrels. Hick is a most intelligent fellow, but he gets very angry if I don’t always agree with him. Now this document…”
The children listened patiently, not understanding a word of all the long speech that Mr. Smellie was making.
He quite forgot that he was talking to children, and he spoke as if Larry and Daisy were as learned as hihiself. They began to feel very bored. When he turned to get another sheaf of old papers, Larry whispered to Daisy. “Go and see if you can find any of his shoes in the cupboard outside in the hall.”
Daisy slipped out. Mr. Smellie didn’t seem to notice
that she was gone. Larry thought he would hardly notice
if he, Larry, went too!
Daisy found the hall cupboard. She opened the door and went inside. It was full of boots, shoes3 goloshes, sticks and coats. Daisy hurriedly looked at the shoes. She turned up each pair. They seemed about the right size, but they hadn’t rubber soles.
Then she turned up a pair that had rubber soles! How marvellous! Perhaps they were the very ones! She looked at the markings – but for the life of her she couldn’t quite remember the markings in the drawing of the footprint. Were they or were they not just like the ones she was looking at?
“I’ll have to compare them,” thought the little girl at last. “I must take one shoe home with me and go down to see the footprint drawing. We shall soon see if they are the right ones.”
She stuffed a shoe up the front of her jersey. It made a very funny lump, but she couldn’t think where else to hide the shoe. She crept out of the hall cupboard – straight into Miss Miggle!
Miss Miggle was tremendously astonished to see Daisy coming out of the boot cupboard. “Whatever are you doing?” she asked. “Surely you are not playing hide-and-seek?”
“Well – not exactly” said Daisy, who didn’t quite know what to say. Miss Miggle carried a tray of buns and milk into the study, where Mr. Smellie was still lecturing poor Larry. She put the tray down on the table. Daisy followed close behind her, hoping that no one would notice the enormous lump up her jersey.
“I thought the children would like to share your eleven o’clock lunch with you, sirs” said Miss Miggle. She turned to look at Daisy. “Gracious, child – is that your hanky up the front of your jersey. What a place to keep it!”
Larry glanced at his sister and was amazed to see the curious lump behind her jersey.
“I keep all kinds of things up my jersey-front,” said Daisy, hoping that no one would ask her to show what
she had. Nobody did. Larry was just about to, but stopped hihiself in time on seeing that the lump was decidedly the shape of a shoe!
The children had milk and buns, but Mr. Smellie did not touch his. Miss Miggle kept at his elbow, trying to stop him talking and to make him eat and drink.
“You have your milk now, sir,” she kept saying. “You didn’t have your breakfast, you know.” She turned to the children. “Ever since the night of the fire poor Mr. Smellie has been terribly upset. Haven’t you, sir?”
“Well, the loss of those unique and quite irreplaceable documents in the fire gave me a shock,” said Mr. Smellie. “Worth thousands of pounds they were. Oh, I know Hick was insured and will get his money back all right, but that isn’t the point. The documents were of the greatest imaginable value.”
“Did you quarrel about those that morning?” asked Daisy.
“Oh no; you see, Hick said these documents here, that I’ve just been showing you, were written by a man called Ulinus,” said Mr. Smellie earnestly, “and I know perfectly well that they were written by three different people. I could not make Mr. Hick see reason. He flew into a terrible temper, and practically turned me out of the house. In fact, he really frightened me. He frightened me so much that I left my documents behind.”
“Poor Mr. Smellie,” said Daisy. “I suppose you didn’t know anything about the fire till the morning?”
“Not a thing!” said Mr. Smellie.
“Didn’t you go near Mr. Hick’s house when you went for your evening walk?” asked Larry. “If you had, you might have seen the fire starling.”
Mr. Smellie looked up startled. His glasses fell right off his nose. He picked them up with a trembling hand and put them on again. Miss Miggle put a hand on his arm.
“Now, now,” she said, “you just drink up your milk, sir. You’re not yourself this last day or two. You told me you didn’t know where you went that evening. You just wandered about.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Smellie, sitting down heavily in a chair. “That’s what I did, didn’t I, Miggle? I just wandered about. I can’t always remember what I do, can I?”
“No,, you can’t, sir,” said kind Miss Higgle, patting Mr. Smellie’s shoulder. “The quarrel and the fire have properly upset you. Don’t you worry, sir!”
She turned to the children and spoke in a low voice, “You’d better go. He’s got hihiself a bit upset.”
The children nodded and slipped out They went into the garden, ran down to the bottom and climbed over the wall.
“Funny, isn’t it?” said Daisy. “Why did he act so strangely when we began to ask him what he did the evening of the fire? Do you suppose he did start it – and has forgotten all about it? Or remembers it and is frightened? Or what?”
“It’s a puzzle,” said Larry. “He seehis too gentle a man to do anything so awful as burn a cottage down – but he might be fierce in some queer way. What have you got under your jersey, Daisy? “
“A rubber-soled shoe with funny markings,” said Daisy, bringing it out “Do you think it is like the footprint?”
“It looks as if it might be,” said Larry, getting excited. “Let’s go straight to the others and compare it with the drawing. Come on! I can hardly wait!”
A Surprising Talk with Lily.
Larry and Daisy rushed up to the others. They stared at the shoe in her hand in excitement.
“Daisy! Oh, Daisy! Have you found the rubber-soled shoes that belong to the man who burnt the cottage?” asked Fatty.
“I think so,” said Daisy importantly. “You see, Larry
and I went to see Mr. Smellie, as we had planned to do -and whilst he was talking to Larry I slipped away and looked in his hall cupboard where shoes and things are kept. And among the shoes I found one pair that had rubber soles – and I’m almost certain the markings are the same as in those footprints we saw.”