“Not at all,” said Fatty, in his most courteous voice. “Er—did you find anything interesting?”
“Oh—just finger-prints—or rather, glove-prints—and foot-prints,” said Tonks. “Same as you did, I expect. Pretty big fellow the thief seems to have been. Made a good getaway too—nobody saw him go, nobody met him down the hill—might have been invisible!”
Fatty laughed. “That’s what Jinny said. You’d have thought a big fellow like that, carrying a sack or parcel of some kind, would have been noticed, wouldn’t you? Pity the baker didn’t spot him when he arrived with the bread.”
“Yes. He never saw a thing,” said Tonks. “I must say it was pretty brave of him to go upstairs with Jinny and look all round—he’s a tiny little fellow, and wouldn’t be any match for a big man. I went along to see him last night. He reckons his coming disturbed the thief. He hadn’t really stolen very much, as far as I can make out.”
“Did anyone else come that afternoon—to Norton House, I mean?” asked Fatty.
“The postman, a woman delivering election leaflets and a man selling logs, according to Jinny,” said Tonks. “We’ve seen them all—they didn’t notice anything out of the way, not even the ladder. Anyway, they came a good time before the thief.”
“Where was the gardener?” asked Fatty.
“He’d gone off to take some tackle down to the gymkhana for Miss Hilary,” said Tonks. “He came back just as all the excitement was over. The baker sent him off to tell me about the robbery, so down he went to Petter’s Field again.”
Fatty fell silent. This was a queer kind of thief—big, clumsy, easy to see—and yet apparently invisible! Not a soul had noticed him.
“Did you find any other clues?” asked Fatty. Tonks looked at him doubtfully. He had already said rather a lot to this polite and quite helpful boy. But ought he to tell him everything?
“You needn’t worry about what you tell me,” said Fatty, seeing at once that Tonks had something else to say and wasn’t sure about it. “I’m a friend of the Inspector’s—you know that. All I do is help if I can.”
“Yes. I know that,” said Tonks. “The Inspector said, ‘Well, well—if we can’t find the thief, Tonks, Master Frederick certainly will!’ ”
“Well, there you are,” said Fatty, grinning. “You haven’t found him yet—so give me a chance, Tonks.”
The policeman produced two dirty bits of paper. He handed them to Fatty, who looked at them with much interest. One had scribbled on it:
2 Frinton
The other was even shorter. It simply said,
1 Rods.
“What do they mean?” asked Fatty, studying the dirty little scraps of paper.
“Don’t know any more than you do,” said Tonks, taking them back. “Number 2, Frinton. Number 1, Rods. Looks like addresses of some sort. But I’m not going off to Frinton or Rods, wherever they are, to hunt for the thief! We found these bits of paper near the bush where the stolen goods had been thrown.”
“Funny,” said Fatty. “Do you think they’ve really anything to do with this case? They look like scraps of paper torn up by someone and thrown away.”
“That’s what I said,” agreed Tonks. “Anyway, I’ll have to keep them, in case they’re important.”
Fatty could see there was nothing else to find out from Tonks. He got up. “Well—I wish you luck in finding the thief,” he said. “It seems to me the only way to spot him will be to snoop round everywhere till we see a man wearing size twelve shoes and size nine gloves!”
Tonks gave a sudden grin. “Well—if Mr. Goon likes to do that, he’s welcome. He’s taking over the case when he comes back. Nice for him to have something to do in this dead-and-alive hole. I’m used to a big town—I don’t like these quiet country places where the only thing that happens is a dog that chases sheep, or a man that doesn’t buy his wireless licence.”
Fatty could have told Tonks how wrong he was. He could have told him of all the extraordinary and exciting mysteries that had happened in Peterswood—but he didn’t, because of Tonks’ unexpected piece of news about Goon.
“Did you say Mr. Goon was coming back?” he asked. “When?”
“You sound pleased,” said Tonks. “I did hear you didn’t like one another! He’s coming back this afternoon. I hand over then. I shan’t be having any more to do with this case. Anyway Goon ought to put his hands on the thief soon enough—he can’t be far away.”
Fatty glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. He must go, or he would keep the others waiting. He had found out all he wanted to know—though it wasn’t much help really. And Goon was coming back! Old Goon. Clear-Orf, with his bombastic ways and his immense dislike of all the Five Find-Outers and their doings—to say nothing of Buster.
Fatty shook hands solemnly with Tonks, assured him that it had been a great pleasure to meet him, and went off on his bicycle, with Buster panting once again near the pedals.
The others were waiting for him in Pip’s garden. It was very hot again, and they lay on their backs, with iced lemonade in a patch of shade.
“Here’s old Fatty,” said Pip, hearing his bicycle bell ringing as Fatty came at sixty miles an hour up the drive. “How in the world can he ride at that pace when it’s so hot?”
But Fatty was the bringer of news, and he didn’t think once about the heat as he came riding up the garden path to the others. He flung his bicycle down and beamed round at them all.
“Goon’s coming back,” he said. “This afternoon! And he’ll take over the case of the Invisible Thief—so we shall have some fun.”
Everyone sat up at once. “That’s good news,” said Larry, who always enjoyed their tussle of wits with Goon. “Did you see Tonks then? Had he anything to say?”
Fatty sat down. “Not much,” he said. “He and the Inspector didn’t really find out any more than I did. I’ll tell you what I found out yesterday in a minute—unless Bets has already told you?”
No, Bets hadn’t. She had thought that Fatty ought to tell everything—so he got out his note-book and went into all the details of the new case.
He told them of the setting-up of the ladder—the large foot-prints in the bed below—the equally large glove-prints in the bedroom above—the throwing out of the stolen goods—the apparently completely invisible getaway.
“Only two ways of escape—down the ladder or down the stairs,” said Fatty. “And Jinny the housekeeper was standing in the hall, where she could see both—and she swears nobody came down either stairs or ladder.”
“Must have got out of another upstairs window then,” said Pip.
“All either fastened and shut, or too far from the ground,” said Fatty. “There’s only one that might have been used—and that is a tiny window in a box-room—there was a fat pipe running by it to the ground. Anyone could have slithered down that—if he was tiny enough to get out of the window! But—the window was shut and fastened when Jinny went round the upstairs part of the house.”
“Hm—well, no thief could squeeze out of a window, hold on to a pipe, and then shut and fasten the window after him—from the inside!” said Pip. “It’s a bit of a puzzle, isn’t it? Jinny’s right—the man’s invisible!”
“Well, if he is, he’ll certainly perform again,” said Larry. “I mean—an invisible thief has a great advantage, hasn’t he!”
Fatty laughed. He showed them his note-book with the drawings of the foot-prints, the glove-prints—and the curious round-shaped print with the faint criss-cross marks.
“Can’t imagine what made that mark,” he said. “It was near the bush where the stolen goods were thrown. And look—can anyone make anything of this?”
He showed them the curious addresses—if they were addresses—that he had copied into his notebook too.
“Number 2, Frinton. Number 1, Rods,” he said. “Those words and numbers were found on two separate dirty scraps of paper near the bush. What on earth do they mean?”
“Frinton,” said Bets, wrinkling her forehead in a frown. “Wait a minute. That rings a bell, somehow. Frinton, Frinton. Frinton! Where have I heard that lately?”
“Oh—one of your friends sent you a post-card from Frinton-on-Sea, I expect, silly,” said Pip.
“No. Wait a minute—I’m remembering!” said Bets. “It’s that place down by the river—not very far from here, actually—the place where they take visitors—Frinton Lea!”
“Clever old Bets,” said Fatty, admiringly. “There may be something in that. If we find a large-sized fellow slouching about there, we’ll keep a watch on him.”
“What about Number 1 Rods,” said Larry.
Nobody could think up anything for that.
“We’ll go round looking at the names of houses and finding out if anyone has that name,” said Fatty. “Rods. It’s a peculiar name, anyhow. Well, Find-Outers—the Mystery has begun!”