Mystery Of The Burnt Cottage (9 page)

“Perhaps we could peep into Mr. Smellie’s boot—

cupboard/’ said Larry, who hadn’t the faintest idea how he would set about doing such a thing. “Listen - there are four Suspects. One was Mrs. Minns, but as she had rheumatism all the evening of the fire, and was stuck fast in her chair, according to her sister, she couldn’t have started the fire. So that leaves three Suspects. The tramp was another Suspect, but as he does not wear rubber-soled shoes, or a grey coat, and did not get away quickly as we might have expected him to, we can practically rule him out too. So that leaves two Suspects.”

“I think it was Horace Peeks,” said Pip. “Why shouldn’t he tell us where he was on the evening of the fire? That’s very suspicious.”

“Well, if Mr. Smellie can tell us where he was, that will only leave Horace Peeks,” said Larry. “Then we will really pay all our attention to him, find out what his shoes are like, and if he has a grey coat indoors with a tear, and what he was doing on that evening and everything.”

“Then what do we do?” asked Bets. “Go and tell the police?”

“What! Tell old Clear-Orf and have him taking all the credit and praise to hihiself?” cried Larry. “I should think not. We ought to go to the Inspector of Police hihiself, Inspector Jenks. He’s head of all the police in this district. Daddy knows him quite well. He’s a very, very clever man, and he lives in the next town.”

“I should be frightened of him,” said Bets. “I’m even a bit frightened of Clear-Orf.”

“Pooh! Frightened of that old stickin-the-mud with his froggy eyes?” said Fatty. “You want to be like Larry, sail down a hill on your bike and knock him off, crash, round the corner!”

Every one laughed. Then a bell rang and the five got up, with Buster running round their legs. Fatty said good night and went to have dinner with his father and mother at the hotel. Larry and Daisy got their bicycles and rode home. Pip went in to supper and Bets went off to bed. Buster went with Fatty. His young master retired to bed very early that night for he was still stiff and his bruises

were painful. Buster had a good look at them when Fatty undressed,, but didn’t seem to think much of them.

“Tomorrow that old tramp will come to get the boots Mummy has looked out for him,” said Pip to Bets. “We’ll ask him a few questions.”

“What questions?” asked Bets.

“We’ll ask him straight out if he saw Horace Peeks in the ditch, hiding,” said Pip. “If he says yes, that will be a great help to us,”

None of the children slept very well that night for they were all excited over the happenings of the day. Bets dreamt of Clear-Orf, and woke with a squeal, dreaming that he was putting her in prison for starting the fire! Fatty slept badly because of his bruises. It didn’t matter how he lay, he seemed to lie on two or three.

It had been arranged that the next day Pip and Bets and Fatty should stay in their garden, on the look out for the tramp. Pip should question him carefully. Larry had told him what to ask.

“Have the boots out so that he can see them and want them badly,” said Larry. “But don’t let him have them till he’s answered your questions. No answers, no boots. See?”

So the next day Fatty and Buster joined Pip and Bets, and the four of them waited for the tramp to turn up.

The tramp did turn up. He slipped slyly in at the back gate, looking all round and about as if he thought some one was after him. He still had on the terrible old shoes, with toes sticking out of the upper parts. Pip saw him and gave a low call.

“Hallo! Come over here!”

The tramp looked over to where Pip was standing. “You’re not setting that bobby after me? ” he asked.

“Of course not,” said Pip impatiently. “We don’t like him any more than you do.”

“Got the boots?” asked the tramp. Pip nodded. The old fellow shambled over to Mm and Pip took him to the summer-house. There was a small wooden table there, and

the boots were on it. The tramp’s eyes gleamed when he saw them.

“Good boots,” he said. “They’ll fit me proper.”

“Wait a minute,” said Pip, as the tramp put out his hand to take them. “Wait a minute. We want you to answer a few questions first, please.”

The tramp stared at him, and looked sulky. “I’m not going to be mixed up in no trouble,” he said.

“Of course not,” said Pip. “We shan’t split on you. What you tell us we shall keep to ourselves.”

“What do you want to know?” asked the tramp.

“Did you see any one hiding in Mr. Hick’s garden on the evening of the fire? ” asked Fatty.

“Yes,” said the tramp. “I saw some one in the bushes.”

Bets, Pip and Fatty felt quite breathless. “Did you really see them?” asked Pip.

“Course I see them,” said the tramp. “I see plenty of people in the garden that evening, so I did.”

“Where were you?” asked Bets curiously.

“That’s none of your business,” said the tramp roughly. “I wasn’t doing no harm.”

“Probably watching the henhouse, waiting for a chance of an egg or two, even though old Hiccup had chased him away,” thought Pip, quite correctly.

They all stared at the tramp, and he stared back. “Was the person who was hiding in the bushes a young man with a lock of hair falling over his forehead?” asked Pip, describing Horace Peeks. “Did he have sort of bulgy eyes?”

“Don’t know about his eyes,” said the tramp. “But he had a lock of hair all right. He was whispering to some one, but I couldn’t see who.”

This was news. Horace Peeks hiding in the bushes with somebody else! Were there two people concerned in the crime then?

It was a puzzle. Could Horace Peeks and Mr. Smellie have planned the fire together? The children didn’t know what to think.

“Look here,” began Pip. But the tramp had had enough.

“You give me them boots,” he said, and he stretched out his hand for them. “I’m not saying no more. Be getting myself into trouble if I doa’t look out. I don’t want to be naked up in anything, I don’t. I’m a very honest fellow.”

He took the boots and put them on. He would not say a word more. “He seehis to have gone dumb,” said Pip. They watched the tramp walk away in his new boots, which were a little too big for him, but otherwise very comfortable.

“Well, the mystery is getting deeper,” said Fatty. “Now we seem to have two people hiding in the garden, instead of one. There’s no doubt one was dear Horace. But who was the other? Perhaps Larry and Daisy will have some news for us when they come.”

Buster had growled nearly all the time the tramp had been in the summer-house. Fatty had had to hold him tight, or he would have flown at the dirty old fellow. Now he suddenly began to bark joyously.

“It’s Larry and Daisy,” said Bets. “Oh, good. I wonder if they’ve got any news.”

Mr. Smellie-and a Rubber-soled Shoe!

Larry and Daisy had spent an exciting morning. They had decided to interview old Mr. Smellie as soon as possible, and get it over. They talked over the best way of tackling him.

“We can’t very well go and ask for a drink of water or anything like that,” said Daisy. “I simply can’t imagine what excuse we can up for going to see him.”

They both thought hard for some minutes. Thea Larry looked up. “What about throwing our ball into Mr. Smellie’s garden?” he said.

“What good would that do?” asked Daisy.

“Well, silly, we could go after it - climb over the wall, don’t you see - and hope that he will see us and ask what we’re doing,” said Larry.

“I see” said Daisy. “Yes - it seehis quite a good idea. We’ll do that.”

So Larry threw His ball high and it went over the trees, and fell in the middle of the lawn next door. The children ran down to the wall at the bottom. In a moment or two they were over it and in the bushes at the end of Mr. Smellie’s garden.

They went boldly out on to the lawn and began hunting for the ball. They could see it quite well, for it was in the edge of a rose-bed on the lawn. They called to one another as they hunted, hoping that some one in the house would hear them and come to a window.

Presently a window opened at the right side of the house, and a man looked out. His head was quite bald on top, and he had a straggling beard that reached almost to the middle of his waistcoat. He wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses that made his eyes look very big.

“What are you doing?” he called.

Larry went and stood under the window and spoke extremely politely.

“I hope you don’t mind, sir, but our ball fell in your garden, and we’re looking for it.”

A gust of wind blew into the garden and flung Daisy’s hair over her face. It tugged at Mr. Smellie’s beard, and it rustled round the papers on the desk by him. One of them rose into the air and flew straight out of the window. Mr. Smellie made a grab at it, but didn’t catch it. It fell to the ground below,

“I’ll get it for you, sir,” said Larry politely. He picked up the paper and handed it back to the old man.

“What a very queer paper,” he said. It was thick and yellow, and covered with curious writing.

“It is parchment,” said Mr. Smellie, looking at Larry out of short-sighted eyes. “This is very, very old.”

Larry thought it would be a good idea to take a great

Interest in old papers. “Oh, sir!” he said. “Is it really very old? How old? How very interesting!”

Mr. Smellie was pleased to have any one taking such a sudden interest. “I have much older ones,” he said. “I spend my time deciphering them - reading them, you know. We learn a great deal of old history that way.”

“How marvellous!” said Larry. “I suppose you couldn’t show me any, sir, could you?”

“Certainly, my boy, certainly,” said Mr. Smellie, positively beaming at Larry. “Come along in. I think you will find that the garden door is open.”

“Could my sister come too?” asked Larry. “She would be very, very interested, I know.”

“Dear me, what unusual children,” thought Mr. Smellie, as he watched them going in at the garden door. They were just wiping their feet when a little bird-like woman darted out of a room nearby and gazed at them fa surprise.

“Whatever are you doing here?” she said. “This is Mr. Smellie’s house. He doesn’t allow any one inside.”

“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.