Still, if the colonel’s boots led him to the thief who bought them, the scraps of paper would have come in useful after all. Fatty thought swiftly as he weeded.
He heard the sound of bicycle tyres on the lane outside. The sound stopped as someone got off the bicycle. A head looked cautiously over the hedge. Fatty looked up at the same moment.
Goon was peering over the hedge! He saw Fatty at the same moment as Fatty saw him, and gave a startled grunt. That tramp! He’d left him asleep on the bench outside his house—and now here he was weeding in the colonel’s garden. Goon couldn’t believe his eyes.
Fatty nodded and smiled amiably. Goon’s eyes nearly dropped out of his head. He felt very angry. Everywhere he went there was somebody before him—first those girls, then those boys, now this deaf old, dirty old tramp. If Goon had been a dog he would have growled viciously.
“What you doing here?” said Goon, in a low, hoarse voice.
“Weeding,” answered Fatty, forgetting to be deaf. “Nice job, weeding.”
“Any cheek from you,” began Goon, forgetting not to wake the colonel. But it was too late. Colonel Cross awoke once more with a jump. He sat up and mopped his forehead. Then he caught sight of Goon’s brilliant red face over the top of the hedge. Goon was still addressing Fatty.
“What you doing in this neighbourhood?” Goon was saying aggressively.
The colonel exploded. “What’s that! What’s that! Are you addressing me, my man? What are you doing, I should like to know! Hrrrrrumph!”
The last noise startled Goon very much. Fatty chortled as he weeded.
“It’s all right, sir. I was speaking to that tramp,” said Goon, with dignity. “I—er—I had occasion to speak sternly to him this morning, sir. Can’t have loiterers and tramps around—what with robberies and things.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Colonel Cross. “Go away. Policemen should know better than to come and wake me up by shouting to tramps who have been given a job in my garden.”
“I came to have a word with you, actually, sir,” said Goon, desperately. “Privately.”
“If you think I’m going to get up and go indoors and hear a lot of nonsense from you about robberies and tramps and loiterers you’re wrong,” said the old colonel fiercely. “If you’ve got something to say, say it here! That old tramp won’t understand a word.”
Fatty chortled to himself again. Goon cleared his throat. “Well—er—I—came, sir—just to ask you about your boots!”
“Mad,” said the colonel, staring at Goon. “Mad! Must be the hot weather! Wants to talk about my boots! Go away and lie down. You’re mad!”
Goon was afraid to go on with the matter. He wheeled his bicycle down the lane, and waited a little while to see if the old tramp came out. He meant to have a word with him! Ho! He’d teach him to cheek him in the colonel’s garden!
Fatty finished the bed and tiptoed out, because the colonel was once more asleep. He said good day to the housekeeper, and went off down the path with the old pair of shoes slung round his neck. He was longing for a moment to open his note-book and compare the pattern of those rubber heels!
He didn’t see Mr. Goon till he was almost on top of him. Then the policeman advanced on him, with fire in his eye. He stopped short when he saw the enormous pair of shoes slung round Fatty’s neck.
To think he’d come all the way down there to talk politely to the colonel about his boots, and had been ordered off and told he was mad—and this dirty old tramp had actually begged a pair, and was wearing them round his neck! Shoes that might be Great Big Clues!
“Give me those!” ordered Goon, and grabbed at the shoes. But the feeble, shuffling old tramp twisted cleverly out of the way, and raced off down the road as if he was a school-boy running in a race.
As indeed he was! Fatty put on his fastest speed, and raced away before Mr. Goon had recovered sufficiently from his surprise even to mount his bicycle.
Fatty turned a corner and hurled himself through a hedge into a field. He tore across it, knowing that Goon couldn’t ride his bicycle there. He would have to go a long way round to cut him off!
Across the field, over the stile, across another field, down a lane, round a corner—and here was the front gate of his own house! Into the gate and down the path to the shed. The cook caught a brief glimpse of a tramp-like figure from the kitchen window and then it was gone. She hardly knew if she had seen it or not.
Fatty sank down in the shed, panting, and then got up again to lock the door. Phew! What a run! Goon was well and truly left behind. Now to examine the rubber heels.
On the Track At Last!
Fatty pulled out his note-book and turned over its pages eagerly till he came to the drawings he had made of the foot-prints. He glued his eyes to his sketch of the pattern of the rubber heel shown in one of the prints.
“Line going across there, two little lines under it, long one there, and three lines together,” he noted. Then he compared the drawn pattern with the rubber heel on one of the shoes.
“It’s the same!” he said exultingly. “The absolute same! That proves it—although it’s not the colonel, it’s somebody who wears his old boots—somebody who bought a pair last year at Miss Kay’s jumble sale. I’m on the track at last!”
He was thrilled. After all their goings and comings, their watchings and interviewings which seemed to have come to nothing, at last they had something to work on. Something Mr. Goon hadn’t got!
Fatty did a solemn little jig round his shed. He looked very comical indeed, for he was still disguised as a tramp He carried one of the big shoes in each hand and waved them about gracefully, as if he was doing a scarf or flower dance.
He heard a sound at the window, and stopped suddenly. Was it Goon? Or his mother?
It was neither. It was Larry’s grinning face, enjoying the spectacle of the old tramp’s idiotic dance. Fatty rushed to the door and unlocked it. All the others were there, smiling to see Fatty’s excitement.
“What is it, Fatty? You’ve got good news,” said Daisy, pleased.
“I must get these things off,” said Fatty, pulling off his grey wig and suddenly appearing forty years younger. “Phew—a wig’s jolly hot this weather! Now, report to me, all of you, while I make myself decent.”
They all made their reports. First the girls, who giggled when they told him of the boots and shoes they had got from the Rodneys for the jumble sale. “We’ve taken them already to give to Miss Kay, the person who’s running it,” said Daisy. “Oh dear—if you could have seen Goon’s face when he saw us staggering out with loads of shoes and boots! Anyway, there’s nobody at the Rodneys with big feet, so that’s another clue finished with. I don’t somehow think those scraps of paper meant anything.”
“Nor do I,” said Larry. “We got mixed up with old Clear-Orf too—he arrived at Rodways when we were there. He nearly had a heart-attack when he saw us, he was so furious! We really thought we’d got something at that place, though, when we saw a colossal sou’wester and oilskin hanging up. But no—the owner wears small-size shoes after all!”
“Now tell us what you did down at Colonel Cross’s,” said Daisy expectantly. “Go on, Fatty!”
Fatty related his tale with gusto, and when he came to the bit where he had looked up from his weeding and seen Goon’s face glowering over the hedge, with the sleeping colonel between them, the others went off into fits of helpless laughter.
“Oh, Fatty—if only I’d been there!” said Daisy. “What about the shoes? Tell us.”
Fatty told them everything, and proudly displayed the shoes. “And now the greatest news of all!” he said, turning up the shoes suddenly so that they displayed the rubber heels. “See the rubbers? Well, look!”
He placed his note-book down beside one of the shoes, so that the drawing and the rubber heel were side by side. The children exclaimed at once.
“It’s the same pattern! The very same! Golly, we’re getting somewhere now. But surely—it can’t be the colonel who’s got anything to do with the robbery?”
“No,” said Fatty, and explained about how a pair of his boots had been sent to last year’s jumble sale. “And if we can find out who bought them, I think we’ve got our hands on the thief!” said Fatty exultingly. “We shall find that the person who bought them is somebody else with big feet—somebody the cobbler doesn’t know about because probably the fellow mends his own boots. We’re on the track at last!”