“Pip! Fatty! Come and catch Buster. He seems to have gone off his head. Oh—here he comes again. What is the matter with him!”
Buster tore up the stairs at sixty miles an hour, slid along the landing again and came to rest under a chair. He lay there, panting, quite tired out, his tail thumping against the floor.
Everyone felt better after that. Fatty looked at his watch. “Let’s go to Oliver’s again and have a splash—I could do with three or four meringues.”
“Ooooh, yes—I’ve got some money today,” said Larry, pulling out a ten-shilling note. “It’s one my uncle Ted gave me weeks ago and I couldn’t think where I’d put it for safety. I found it today in my tie-box.”
“We’ll all go shares,” said Pip. “I’ve got two bob, and Bets has got a shilling.”
“Right,” said Fatty. “The more the merrier. Come on. I’ll just telephone to my mother to tell her we’re going to Oliver’s.”
They went off, feeling happier than they had done for days. Buster’s tail had appeared again and was wagging merrily as he ran along with them. His master was all right again—life was bright once more!
They stayed a long time over their tea, talking hard, and eating equally hard. Nobody said a word about the mystery. They weren’t going to remember defeat when eclairs and meringues and chocolate cake were spread in front of them! That would be silly.
Feeling rather full, they walked back to Fatty’s and went down the garden to the shed. Buster trotted on ahead. He surprised them all by suddenly barking urgently and loudly.
“What’s up, Buster?” shouted Fatty, beginning to run. Larry raced down the path with him. Whatever could Buster be barking about like that?
Pip and Larry came to the shed. The door was wide open, though Fatty always left it shut and locked. Fatty ran in, amazed. He looked round.
His things were all in a muddle! Clothes had been dragged down from the pegs, drawers in a chest had been emptied, and everywhere was mess and muddle. Someone had been there and turned everything upside down.
“My money’s gone, of course,” said Fatty in exasperation. “I’d got two pounds I was saving for Mother’s birthday—why did I leave it here! I never do leave money in the ordinary way. Blow!”
“Anything else gone?” asked Larry. Pip, Daisy and Bets crowded into the untidy shed. Bets burst into tears, but nobody took any notice of her, not even Fatty.
“My knife’s gone—that silver one,” said Fatty. “And that little silver case I kept odds and ends in. And yes—my cigarette case is gone, the one I use when I’m disguised. Well, the thief is welcome to that! I suppose he thought it was silver, but it isn’t. It’s Woolworth!”
“Oh, Fatty!” wailed Bets. “What’s happened? Has a robber been here? Oh, what shall we do?”
“Shut up, Bets,” said Pip. “Behaving like a baby as usual. Go home if you can’t be any help.”
Bets stopped wailing at once. She looked at Fatty but he was completely engrossed in checking up his belongings.
She went outside to swallow her tears and be sensible—and then she suddenly saw something that made her stare. She yelled loudly.
“Fatty! FATTY! Come here, quick!”
Fatty appeared at top speed, the others behind him. Bets pointed to the muddy path near the shed. On it were clear foot-prints—enormous ones!
“Gosh!” said Fatty. “It’s our robber again. The very same one—look at the marks his rubber heels made—the same pattern as before.”
“Will there be glove-prints too?” asked Daisy excitedly, and she went back into the shed.
“Shouldn’t think so,” said Fatty following. “There’s no wall-paper or distemper to show them up.”
“Well, look—there they are!” said Daisy, pointing triumphantly. And sure enough, there were two large glove-prints showing clearly on the looking-glass that Fatty had in his shed!
“He likes to leave his mark, doesn’t he?” said Larry. “You’d almost think he was saying, ‘This is the robber, his mark!’ ”
“Yes,” said Fatty thoughtfully. “Well, it’s the same fellow all right. He hasn’t got away with a great deal, thank goodness—but what a mess!”
“We’ll soon clear it up,” said Bets, eager to do something for poor old Fatty.
“Let’s take a very very careful snoop round before we move anything,” said Fatty. “The Mystery has come right to our very door—it’s all-alive-oh again. We may perhaps be able to solve it this time.”
“I suppose you’re not going to inform the police!” said Larry with a laugh.
“No. I’m not,” said Fatty very firmly. “First thing I’m going to do is to measure up the foot-prints to make absolutely certain they’re the same ones that we saw before—at Norton House and at Mrs. Williams’s.”
They were, of course, exactly the same. No doubt about it at all. The glove-prints were the same too.
“We can’t find out whether there was a hollow cough this time,” said Pip, “because there was nobody here to hear it. I suppose there aren’t any scraps of paper, are there, Fatty?”
“None,” said Fatty. “But there weren’t at Mrs. Williams’s either, you know. I’m beginning to think that they really had nothing to do with the robberies. They don’t really link up with anything.”
Daisy went wandering off down the path a little. She came to another print by the side of the path, almost under a shrub. She called Fatty.
“Look!” she said. “Isn’t this queer print like the ones you found in both the other robberies?”
Fatty knelt to see. On the wet ground under the shrub the mark was quite plain—a big roundish print with criss-cross lines here and there.
“Yes,” said Fatty puzzled, turning over the pages of his note-book to compare his drawing with the print. “It’s the same. I cannot imagine what makes it—or why it appears in all the robberies. It’s extraordinary.”
They all gazed down at the strange mark. Pip wrinkled his forehead. “You know—somehow I feel as if I’ve seen it somewhere else besides the robberies. Where could it have been?”
“Think, Pip,” said Fatty. “It might help.”
But Pip couldn’t think. All he could say was that he thought he had seen it somewhere on the day when they all went interviewing.
“That’s not much help,” said Fatty with a sigh. “We were all over the place that day. Now we’d better put everything back. I can’t see that we can find any more clues. As a matter of fact it seems as if this robbery is almost an exact repetition of the others—large foot-prints, glove-prints, strange unknown print, and small goods stolen.”
They hung up the clothes, and put back everything into the chest of drawers. They kept a sharp look-out for any possible clue, but as far as they could see there was none at all.
“How did the thief get down to the shed?” asked Larry. “Did he get in through the back gate leading into the lane, do you think? It’s not far from the shed. Or did he come down the path from the house?”
“Well—if he made that queer mark under the shrub, it rather looks as if he came from the house,” said Fatty. “On the other hand, the large foot-prints are only round and about the shed—I didn’t find any on the path up to the house, did you?”
“No,” said Larry. “Well, it’s more likely he would have come quietly in through the back-gate down by the shed—he wouldn’t be seen then. It’s very secluded down here at the bottom of the garden—can’t be seen from the house at all.”
“All the same, I think we’d better ask the cook and the house-parlourmaid if they saw anyone,” said Fatty. “They just might have. And we’ll ask who has been to the house this afternoon too. Any tradesman or visitor might have seen somebody.”
“Yes. Good idea,” said Larry. “Come on—let’s go and find out.”
The Warning
The house-parlourmaid was out, and had been out all the afternoon. The cook was in, however, and was rather surprised to see all the five children and Buster trooping in at her kitchen door.
“Now don’t you say you want tea,” she began. “It’s a quarter to six, and . . .”
“No, we don’t want tea,” said Fatty. “I just came to ask you a few things. Someone’s been disturbing my belongings in the shed at the bottom of the garden. I wondered if you had seen anyone going down the path to the shed this afternoon.”
“Goodness,” said the cook alarmed. “Don’t tell me there’s tramps about again. I thought I saw a very nasty-looking fellow slipping down that path the other day.”
Fatty knew who that was all right. So did the others. They turned away to hide their grins.
“No—it’s today I want to know about,” said Fatty. “Did you see anyone at all?”
“Not a soul today,” said the cook. “And I’ve been sitting here at this window all the time!”