“Oh, are they?” said Jinny, and Fatty saw that they had gone up in her estimation at once. “Ah, he’s a fine man, that Inspector Jenks. So patient and kind. Went over everything, he did, time and time again. And the questions he asked me! Well there now, you’d never think anyone could pour them out like that!”
“It must have been a great shock for you, Jinny,” said Fatty, in his most courteous and sympathetic voice. He had a wonderful voice for that sort of thing. Bets looked at him in admiration. “I was sorry for poor little Miss Hilary too. I felt I really must see her home.”
“That was real gentlemanly of you,” said Jinny, thinking that Fatty was just about the nicest boy she had ever met. “She’s nervous, is Miss Hilary. And I’ll be nervous too, after this!”
“Oh, you don’t need to be,” said Fatty. “Burglars hardly ever come to the same place twice. Do tell us all about it—if it won’t tire you too much.”
Jinny would not have been tired if she had told her story a hundred times. She began at once.
“Well, I was sitting here, half-asleep-like, with my knitting on my knee—about four o’clock it must have been. And I was thinking to myself, ‘I must really get up and put the kettle on to boil,’ when I heard a noise.”
“Oooh,” said Hilary faintly.
“What sort of noise?” asked Fatty, wishing he could take out his note-book and put all this down. Still, if he forgot anything, Bets would remember it.
“A sort of thudding noise,” said Jinny. “Out there in the garden somewhere. Like as if somebody had thrown something out of the window and it had landed plonk in the garden.”
“Go on,” said Fatty, and Bets and Hilary listened, all eyes.
“Then I heard a cough upstairs somewhere,” said Jinny. “A man’s deep cough that was stifled quickly as if he didn’t want to be heard. That made me sit up, I can tell you! ‘A man!’ I ses to myself. ‘Upstairs and all! Can’t be the master come back—anyway that’s not his cough.’ So up I gets, and I yells up the stairs: ‘If there’s anybody up there that shouldn’t be, I’m getting the police!’ ”
She paused and looked at the others, gratified to see their intense interest.
“Very very brave of you,” said Fatty. “What happened next?”
“Well—I suddenly sees a ladder outside,” said Jinny, enjoying herself thoroughly. “The gardener’s ladder, it looked like—run up against the wall leading to the Mistress’s bedroom. And I thinks to myself, ‘Aha! Mister Robber, whoever you are, I’ll see you coming down that ladder! I’ll take good notice of you too! If you’ve got a bunion on your toe I’ll notice it, and if you’ve got a squint in your eye I’ll know you again!’ I know how important it is to notice what you can, you see.”
“Quite right,” said Fatty approvingly. “And what was the robber like?”
“I don’t know,” said Jinny, and she suddenly looked bewildered. “He never came down that ladder after all!”
There was a pause. “Well—how did he leave the house then?” asked Fatty. “Did you hear him?”
“Never a sound,” said Jinny. “I was standing in the hall, so I know he didn’t come down the stairs—and there’s only one set of stairs in this house. And there I stood, shivering and shaking I don’t mind telling you—till I sees the telephone staring me in the face. And I grabs it and phones the police!”
“Go on,” said Fatty. “What happened to the burglar? Was he still upstairs?”
“Well, just as I finished telephoning, who should come along but the baker and I yells to him, ‘Here you, come here and go upstairs with me. There’s a burglar in the house.’ And the baker—he’s a very very brave man for all he’s so small—he came in and we went into every single room, and not a person was there. Not one!”
“He must have got out of another window,” said Fatty at last.
“He couldn’t!” said Jinny triumphantly. “They were all either shut and fastened, or there’s a steep drop to the ground, enough to kill anyone taking a jump. I tell you, he had to come down the stairs or get down the ladder—and he didn’t do either! There’s a puzzle for you!”
“Well, he must still be there then,” said Fatty and Hilary gave a scream.
“He’s not,” said Jinny. “The Inspector, he looked into every hole and corner, even in the chest in your Ma’s room, Miss Hilary. I tell you what I think—he made himself invisible! Oh, laugh if you like—but how else could he have got away without me seeing him?”
Plenty of Clues
Fatty asked Jinny a great many questions, and she seemed very pleased to answer them. Hilary got bored. “Come on upstairs and see my riding prizes,” she said. “Jinny, those didn’t get stolen, did they?”
“No, Miss Hilary dear—not one of them!” said Jinny comfortingly. “I went to look, knowing as how you set such store on them. It’s things like your Ma’s little silver clock and some of the jewellery she left behind, and your father’s cigarette box that have gone. All things from the bedrooms—nothing from downstairs that I can see.”
“Come on, Bets,” said Hilary, pulling Bets out of the room. “Let’s go upstairs. You come too, Fatty.”
Fatty was only too pleased. Hilary ran on ahead up the stairs. Fatty had a chance to whisper to Bets.
“You must pretend to be awfully interested, Bets, see? That will give me a chance to slip away and have a snoop round.”
Bets nodded. She was bored with the horsey little Hilary, but she would do anything for Fatty. They all went upstairs. Hilary took them into her little room. Bets was quite astonished to see the array of cups and other prizes she had won. She began to ask all kinds of questions at once, so that Fatty might slip away.
“What did you win this cup for? What’s this? Why are there two cups exactly the same? What’s this printed on this cup?”
Hilary was only too anxious to tell her. Fatty grinned. He was soon able to slip away, with Buster trotting at his heels. He went into all the bedrooms. He noticed that in most of the rooms the windows were shut and fastened as Jinny had said. In Hilary’s parents’ room the window was open. Fatty went to it and looked out. A ladder led down from it to the ground.
“That must be the ladder Jinny saw through the hall window,” thought Fatty. “I saw it myself as we went to the stairs. How did that thief get down from upstairs without being seen, if Jinny didn’t see him come down the stairs or the ladder? He can’t be here still, because the stolen goods are gone—and anyway the place must have been thoroughly searched by the Inspector and Tonks.”
He went to see if there was any other window or balcony the thief could have dropped from unseen. But there wasn’t.
Fatty concentrated his attention on the room from which the goods had been stolen. There were large dirty finger-marks on the wall by the window. Fatty studied them with interest.
“The thief wore gloves—dirty gloves too,” he thought. “Well, he couldn’t have been a very expert thief, to leave his prints like that! I’d better measure them.”
He measured them. “Big-handed-fellow,” he said. “Takes at least size eight and a half in gloves, probably nines. Yes, must be nines, I should think. Hallo, he’s left his glove-prints here too—on the polished dressing-table.”
There were the same big prints again showing clearly. Fatty looked at them thoughtfully. It should be easy to pick out this thief—he really had very large hands.
He went to the window again. He leaned out over the top of the ladder. “He came up here by the ladder—didn’t bother about the lower part of the house—he chucked the stuff out of the window—where did it land? Over there on that bed, I suppose. I’ll go down and look. But yet he didn’t get dawn by the ladder? Why? Was he afraid of Jinny spotting him as he went down? He knew she was in the hall because he heard her shouting.”
Fatty pondered deeply. How in the world had the thief got away without being seen? It was true he could have slipped out of any of the other windows, but only by risking a broken leg, because there was such a steep drop to the ground—no ivy to cling to, no balcony to drop down to. Fatty went round the top part of the house again, feeling puzzled.
He came to a box-room. It was very small, and had a tiny window, which was fast-shut. Fatty opened it and looked down. There was a thick pipe outside, running right down to the ground.