Mystery of the Pantomime Cat (10 page)

"Well, Mother," said Fatty, in his most modest voice,
"the fact is, brains
will
tell, you know. I can't help having good
brains, can I? I mean ..."

"Sh!" said his father, as they walked into the
sitting-room. "The talk's begun."

So it had—and a very dull talk it proved to be, on a little-known
part of China, which Fatty devoutly hoped he would never have to visit. He
passed the dull half-hour by thinking out further plans. His father was really
pleased to see such an intent look on Fatty's face.

The Find-Outers were finding the time very long, as they always
did when something exciting was due

to happen. Bets could hardly wait for the next afternoon to come.
How would Fatty be disguised? What would he say? Would he wink at them ?

At twenty-five past three Larry, Daisy, Pip, and Bets walked
sedately on to the platform. A minute later Goon arrived, a little out of
breath, because he had had an argument with P.C. Pippin, and had had to hurry.
He saw the children at once and glared at them.

"What you here for?" he demanded.

"Same reason as you. I suppose," said Pip. "To meet
some one."

"We're meeting Fatty," piped up Bets, and got a nudge
from Larry.

"It's all right," whispered Bets. "I'm not giving
anything away, really—he won't know it's Fatty when he sees him—you know he
won't."

The train came in with a clatter and stopped. Quite a lot of
people got out. Mr. Goon eyed them all carefully. He was standing by the
platform door, leading to the booking-office, and every one had to pass him to
give up their tickets. The four children stood near by, watching out for Fatty.

Bets nudged Pip. A voluminous old lady was proceeding down the
platform, a veil spreading out behind her in the wind. Pip shook his head.
No—good as Fatty was at disguises he could never look like that imperious old
lady.

A man came by, hobbling along with a stick, his hat pulled down
over his eyes, and a shapeless mackintosh flung across his shoulders. He had a
straggling moustache and an absurd little beard. His hair was a little reddish,
and Goon gave him a very sharp look indeed.

But Bets knew it wasn't Fatty. This man had a crooked nose, and
Fatty surely couldn't mimic a thing like that.

It looked almost as if Goon was about to follow this man—and then
he saw some one else—some one with much redder hair, some one much more
suspicious.

This man was evidently a foreigner of some sort, he wore a
peculiar hat on his red hair, which was neatly brushed. He had a
foreign-looking cape round his shoulders, and brightly polished, pointed shoes.

For some peculiar reason he wore bicycle-clips round the bottoms
of his trousers, and this made him even more foreign-looking, though Bets
didn't quite know why it should. The man wore dark glasses on his nose, had a
little red moustache, and his cheeks were very bulgy. He was very freckled
indeed. Bets wondered admiringly how Fatty managed to produce freckles like
that.

She knew it was Fatty, of course, and so did the others, though if
they had not been actually looking for him, they would have been very doubtful
indeed. But there was something about the jaunty way he walked and looked about
that made them quite certain.

The foreigner brushed against Bets as he came to the exit. He dug
his elbow into her, and she almost giggled.

"Your ticket, sir," said the collector, as Fatty seemed
to have forgotten all about this. Fatty began to feel in all his pockets, one
after another, exclaiming in annoyance.

"This tickett! I had him, I know I had him! He was
green."

Mr. Goon
watched him intently, quite ready to arrest him if
he didn't produce his ticket! The foreigner suddenly swooped down by Goon's
feet, and shoved one of them aside with his hand. Goon glared.

"Here. What are you doing?" he began.

"A million apologeeze," said the stranger, waving his ticket
in Goon's face, and almost scraping the skin off the end of the policeman's big
nose. "I have him—he was on the ground, and you put your beeg foots on
him. Aha!"

Fatty thrust the ticket at the astonished collector, and pushed
past Goon. Then he stopped so suddenly that Goon jumped.

"Ah, you are the pliss, are you not?" demanded Fatty,
peering at Goon short-sightedly from his dark glasses. "At first I think
you are an engine-driver—but now I see you are the pliss."

"Yes. I'm the police," said Mr. Goon, gruffly, feeling
more and more suspicious of this behaviour. "Where do you want to go? I
expect you're a stranger here."

"Ah yes, alas! A strangair," agreed Fatty. "I need
to know my way to a place. You will tell me zis place?"

"Certainly," said Goon, only too pleased.

"It is—er—it is—Hoffle-Foffle House, in Willow Road,"
said Fatty, making a great to-do with the Hoffle-Foffle bit. Goon looked blank.

"No such place as—er—what you said," he answered.

"I say Hoffle-Foffle—you say you do not know it? How can zis
be?" cried Fatty, and walked out into the road at top speed, with Goon at
his heels. Fatty stopped abruptly and Goon bumped into him. Bets by this time
was so convulsed with laughter that she had to stay behind.

"There isn't a house of that name," said Goon
exasperated. "Who do you want to see?"

"That ecs my own business—vairy, vairy secret
beeziness," said Fatty. "Where is zis Willow Road? I will find
Hoffle-Foffle by myself."

Goon directed him. Fatty set off at top speed again,

and Goon followed, panting. The four children followed too, trying
to suppress their giggles. Hoffle-Foffle House was, of course, not to be found.

"I will sairch the town till I see zis place," Fatty
told Mr. Goon, earnestly. "Do not accompany me, Mr. Pliss—I am tired of
you."

Whereupon Fatty set off at a great pace again, and left Mr. Goon
behind. He saw the four children still following, and frowned. Little pests!
Couldn't he shadow any one without them coming too? "Clear-orf!" he
said to them, as they came up. "Do you hear me? Clear-Orf!"

"Can't we even go for a walk, Mr. Goon?" said Daisy,
pathetically, and Mr. Goon snorted and hastened to follow "that dratted
foreigner," who by now was almost out of sight.

Mr. Goon, in fact, almost lost him. Fatty was getting tired of
this protracted walk, and wanted to throw Mr. Goon off, and go home and laugh
with the others. But Mr. Goon valiantly pursued him. So Fatty made a pretence
of examining the names of many houses, peering at them through his dark
glasses. He was getting nearer and nearer to his own home by this time.

He managed to pop in at his front gate and scuttled down to the
shed at the bottom of the garden, where he locked the door, and began to pull
off his disguise as quickly as he could. He wiped his face free of paint, pulled
off his false eyebrows and wig, took out his cheek-pads, straightened his tie,
and ventured out into the garden.

He saw the four children looking anxiously over the fence.
"Goon's gone in to tell your mother," whispered Larry. "He
thinks the suspicious foreigner is somewhere in the garden and he wants
permission to search for him."

"Let him," grinned Fatty. "Oh my, how I want to

laugh! Sh! Here's Goon
and
Mother."

Fatty strolled up to meet them. "Why, Mr. Goon," he
began, "what a pleasant surprise!"

"I thought those friends of yours had gone to meet you at the
station," said Mr. Goon, suspiciously.

"Quite right," said Fatty, politely. "They did meet
me. Here they are."

The other four had gone in at the gate at the bottom of the
garden, and were now trooping demurely up the garden path behind Fatty. Goon
stared at them in surprise.

"But—they've been following
me
about all the
afternoon," he began. "And I certainly didn't see you at the
station."

"Oh but, Mr. Goon, he
was
there," said Larry,
earnestly. "Perhaps you didn't recognize him. He does look different
sometimes, you know."

"Mr. Goon," interrupted Mrs. Trotteville, impatiently,
"you wanted to look for some suspicious trespasser in my garden. It's
Sunday afternoon and I want to go back to my husband. Never mind about these
children."

"Yes, but," began Mr. Goon, trying to sort things out in
his mind, and failing. How
could
these kids have met Fatty if he wasn't
there? How dared they say they had met him, when he knew jolly well the four of
them had been trailing him all that afternoon? There was something very
peculiar here.

"Well, Mr. Goon, I'll leave you," said Mrs. Trotteville.
"I've no doubt the children will help you to look for your suspicious
loiterer."

She went in. The children began to look everywhere with such
terrific enthusiasm that Mr. Goon gave it up. He was sure he'd never find that
red-haired foreigner again.
Could
it have been Fatty in one of his
disguises? No—not possibly I Nobody would have the sauce to

lead him on a wild-goosechase like that. And now he hadn't solved
the mystery of who was coming by that 3.30 train! He snorted and went crossly
out of the front gate.

The children flung themselves down on the damp ground and laughed
till they cried. They laughed so much that they didn't see a very puzzled Mr.
Goon looking over the fence at them.
Now
what was the joke? Those
dratted children! Slippery as eels they were—couldn't trust them an inch [

Mr. Goon went back home, tired and cross. "Interfering with
the Law!" he muttered, to P.C. Pippin's surprise. "Always interfering
with the Law! One of these days I'll catch them good and proper—and then
they'll laugh the other side of their faces. Gah!"

Zoe, the First Suspect

The next day, Monday, the Five Find-Outers really set to work.
They all met at Pip's as usual. They were early, half-past nine—but, as Fatty
pointed out, they had a lot to do.

"You and Bets must go and buy a birthday present for that
child—Zoe Markham's niece," he said. "Got any money?"

"I haven't any at all," said Bets. "I owed Pip
three and threepence for a water-pistol, and it's all gone to pay for
that."

"I've got about a shilling, I think," said Daisy.

Fatty put his hand into his pocket and pulled out some silver. He
always seemed to have plenty of money. He had aunts and uncles who tipped him
well, and he was just like a grown-up the way he always seemed to

have enough to spend.

He picked out a two shilling piece and a sixpence. "Here you
are, Daisy. You can get a little something for half-a-crown. When's the child's
birthday?"

"Tomorrow," said Daisy, "I met her little sister
yesterday and asked her."

"Good," said Fatty. "Couldn't be better! Now you go
and buy something, you and Bets, and put a message on it, and deliver it to
Mrs. Thomas, Zoe's sister. And mind you get into conversation with her and find
out exactly when Zoe went there on Friday night, and what time she left."

"How shall we get her talking, though?" said Daisy,
beginning to feel nervous.

Fatty looked sternly at poor Daisy. "Now I really can't plan
every one's conversation! It's up to you to get this done, Daisy. Use your
commonsense. Ask what the mother herself is giving the child—something like
that—and I bet she'll take you in to see the present she's prepared."

"Oh yes—that's a good idea," said Daisy, cheering up.
"Come on, Bets—we'll go and do our bit of shopping."

"I'm going to see Pippin for a few minutes, if I can,"
said Fatty. "I want to find out one or two things before I make further
plans."

"What do you want to know?" asked Larry, interested.

"Well—I want to know if there were any fingerprints on that
wall-mirror, which had to be lifted down to get the safe open, at the back of
it," said Fatty. "And there might have been prints on the safe too.
If there were, and the job was done by one of the actors or actresses, we might
as well give up our detecting at once—because Goon has only got to take every
one's fingerprints, compare them with the ones on mirror

or safe—and there you are. He'd have the thief immediately!"

"Oh, I hope he won't!" said Bets, in dismay. "I
want to go on with this mystery. I want
us
to solve it, not Goon. I line
this finding-out part."

"Don't worry," said Fatty, with a grin. "The thief
wouldn't leave prints behind, I'm sure! He was pretty cunning, whoever he
was."

"Do you think it
was
Boysie, the Pantomime Cat?"
asked Daisy.

"No—not at present, anyway," said Fatty. "Wait and
see what we think of him when we see him. Oh, and Larry, will you and Pip go
along to the theatre this morning and get tickets for this afternoon's show?
Here's the money."

And out came the handful of silver again!

"It's a good thing you're so
rich,
Fatty," said
Bets. "We wouldn't find detecting nearly so easy if you weren't!"